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THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 


THIS    LITTLE    VOLUME    18 
PUBLISHED    BY 

THE  EXECUTIVE  COMMITTEE 

OF   THE 

NEW  ENGLAND  ITALIAN   WAR  RELIEF  FUND 

IN    THE    HOPE   THAT    ITS    MESSAGE 

MAT    INCREASE    TOTJB   INTEREST 

IN    THEIR    WORK 


^  '>. 


/  /V     / 


Nedda 


<^-    /^.7 


THE 

STORY  OF  NEDDA 

An  Italian  Reservist' s  Wife 

By 
LEWIS    NILES    ROBERTS 

Member  of  the  Executive  Committee  of  the  New  England* Italian 
War  Relief  Fund 

With  a  Frontispiece  from  a 
Charcoal  Drawing  by 

JOHN    S.    SARGENT,    R.A. 

and  Other  Illustrations 


CAMBRIDGE,    MASS. 

THE    UNIVERSITY    PRESS 

1917 


Copyright,  1917, 
By  Lewis  Niles  RoBERxa 


First  edition,  5000  copies,  March,  1917 
Second  edition,  4000  copies,  April,  1917 


TO 

MRS.  GEORGE  LEE 

CHAIRMAN   OF   THE   EXECUTIVE   COMMITTEE 

OF   THE 

NEW    ENGLAND   ITALIAN   WAR   RELIEF   FDND 

THIS   LITTLE   STORY 

IS   GRATEFULLY   DEDICATED 

IN   APPRECIATION    OF 

HER    UNTIRING    EFFORTS   AND   VERY   GREAT   ASSISTANCE 

RENDERED   SINCE   ITS   INCEPTION 

TO   THE   FUND 


FOREWORD 

THIS  little  tale  postulates  the  non-e±istence  of 
the  New  England  Italian  War  Relief  Fund 
and  endeavors  to  present  the  situation  which  would 
long  ago  have  confronted  many  of  our  poor  Italian 
women  in  the  North  End,  with  their  little  children, 
if  such  a  relief  had  not  been  organized,  and  which 
will  inevitably  confront  them  if  the  fund  breaks 
down  through  lack  of  support  from  the  public. 

Both  the  author  and  the  Executive  Committee  of 
the  fund  wish  to  express  their  gratitude  and  appre- 
ciation to  Mr.  John  S.  Sargent  for  having  so  gener- 
ously made  a  drawing  for  the  frontispiece.  They 
also  wish  to  thank  the  Houghton,  Mifflin  Company 
for  having  kindly  permitted  two  illustrations  in 
publications  by  them  to  be  reproduced  in  this  book 
and  Mr.  C.  Howard  Roberts  for  his  personal  efforts 
and  assistance  on  matters  connected  with  its  publi- 
cation. They  furthermore  express  their  thanks  and 
recognition  of  the  generosity  of  Mr.  Adrian  J.  lorio 
for  having  specially  drawn  and  given  a  cover  design. 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

Nedda Frontispiece 

By  John  S.  Sargent 

FACING    PAGE 

Border  Design  around  the  Verses  to  Queen 

Elena x 

By  Adrian  J.  lorio 

Nedda's  Madonna 26 

From  "  The  Holy  Night  "  by  Correggio 

Nedda's  Quarter 74 

By  Lester  G.  Homhy 


To  Her  Majesty  Queen  Elena 

|EAR  lady,  gentle  mother,  queen, 
Whose  loveliness  is  but  the  guise 
That  speaks  thy  soul's  brave  sacrifice  — 
The  things  that  thou  hast  done  and  been: 
Whose  laurels  are  forever  green  — 
Messina  spread  thy  fame  afar; 
Where'er  Italia's  lovers  are, 
There  dost  thou  live  and  reign  supreme. 

What  grief  so  lowly  or  so  mean 
But  it  within  thy  heart's  care  lies 
And  meets  the  searching  of  thine  eyes, 
Which  humblest  woes  have  ever  seen. 
This  simple  tale  of  bitter  need 
I  offer  to  thy  gracious  hand  — 
And  know  that  thou  wilt  understand, 
With  great  compassion's  greater  heed. 

The  Author. 


The  above  lines  were  inserted  in  the  copy  of  "The  Story  of  Necltla" 
presented  to  Queen  Elena. 


THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 


THE  STORY  OF  NEDDA 

An  Italian  Reservist's  Wife 


WHEN  the  big  White  Star  liner  Canopic  en- 
tered the  port  of  Boston  from  Italy  and 
backed  in  beside  the  new  dock,  there  were  no  happier 
hearts  among  all  its  twelve  hundred  immigrants  than 
Marco  and  Nedda  Lucetti.  They  had  embarked 
from  sunny  Sicily  on  a  double  venture,  matrimony 
and  a  new  start  in  life,  and  they  were  both  very 
young  and  very  much  in  love.  So  indeed  what  more 
could  one  want  to  explain  the  smile  on  Nedda's 
pretty  face  and  the  confidence  in  Marco's  black 
eyes  as  they  looked  down  from  the  side  of  the  ship 
on  the  preparations  for  debarkation? 

It  had  been  a  boy  and  girl  love,  theirs  in  the 
straggling  hillside  village  behind  Palermo,  and  it 
had  ripened  frankly  and  openly  among  the  lemon 
trees  of  that  peaceful  countryside  untU  the  old 
priest  blessed  them  and  gave  them  to  each  other.  A 
small  legacy  of  eight  hundred  lire  ($160)  from 
Marco's  old  grandfather,  who  had  died  the  previous 
autumn,  had  made  their  emigration  possible;  and 
though  there  was  no  better  or  stronger  workman 
than  Marco  in  the  village  and  Nedda  could  wash  at 
the    riverside   with    any    girl   thereabouts    and    cook 


2  THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 

home-made  macaroni  with  the  best  of  them,  yet  she 
and  Marco  decided  upon  this  journey  to  far-away 
America  in  the  hope  of  larger  opportunities  and 
better  things  in  life.  It  was  Marco's  idea  prin- 
cipally. He  was  full  of  it  and  most  confident  of 
steady  employment  there  and  high  pay.  Had  not 
Renaldo  Monti  come  back,  after  fifteen  years,  a  rich 
man  and  able  to  build  his  own  house  and  do  nothing 
save  watch  his  lemons  ripen  and  his  wife  and  chil- 
dren grow  fat  from  all  the  good  things  they  ate? 
So  it  was  settled  and  they  were  married,  and  a  few 
days  later  they  boarded  the  Canopic  at  Palermo  and 
sailed  westward  towards  the  land  of  promise. 

The  young  couple  made  a  really  charming  picture 
as  they  stood  together  by  the  ship's  rail,  a  little 
apart  from  the  mass  of  the  immigrants,  who  were 
already  crowding  towards  the  gangway,  and  even 
the  stevedores  on  the  wharf  seemed  to  look  up  at 
them  with  appreciation. 

Marco,  with  his  hat  off  and  a  red  handkerchief 
knotted  around  his  neck,  was  of  good  height,  slen- 
der and  sinewy,  with  a  skin  of  dull  bronze,  clean-cut 
features,  and  a  well-shaped  head,  framed  in  glossy 
black  curls  and  firmly  set  on  manly  shoulders.  His 
attitude  was  typically  Latin,  graceful,  almost  non- 
chalant, but  in  his  easy  relaxation  one  felt  much 
strength  in  reserve  and  the  power  for  work  when 
called  upon. 

Nedda  seemed  such  a  little  thing,  small  even  for 
an  Italian  woman,  but  well  made  and  as  yet  unbent 
by  drudgery,  like  the  older  women  of  her  class.  She 
was  so  thin  she  looked  only  a  slip  of  a  girl  and 
would  have  been  taken  bv  most  observers   for  her 


THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA  3 

companion's  sister.  Her  head-shawl  had  slipped 
back  on  her  shoulders  in  her  preoccupation,  reveal- 
ing a  pretty  and  very  winning  little  face.  If  her 
features  were  less  regular  than  Marco's,  §he  had  a 
sweetness  of  expression  that  was  exceptional  and  a 
smile  that  was  irresistible,  together  with  coloring 
such  as  only  Italy  can  give  and  very  lovely  dark 
eyes. 

So  these  two  arrived  in  the  country  of  their 
dreams,  and  a  week  later  found  them  living  in  a 
tiny  bedroom  and  still  more  tiny  kitchen  in  a  tene- 
ment house  in  the  Italian  quarter  in  Boston's  North 
End.  The  rent  was  high  for  such  poor  accommoda- 
tion and  living  was  dear,  as  they  soon  discovered, 
and  when  war  began  in  Europe  prices  rose  still 
higher.  There  were,  however,  plenty  of  jobs  to  be 
had  for  an  able-bodied  youth  like  Marco,  who  was 
not  afraid  of  hard  manual  labor,  and  in  all  the  city 
there  was  not  a  more  contented  couple  than  the 
Lucettis. 

Two  young  persons,  very  happy  together  and 
busy  with  the  small  affairs  of  daily  life,  have  not 
much  time  to  make  acquaintances,  and  thus  it  hap- 
pened that  neither  Marco  nor  Nedda  made  many 
friends  in  the  Italian  colony,  though  of  course  their 
neighbors  soon  knew  them  by  sight  and  commonly 
referred  to  them  as  the  beautiful  bride  and  groom. 
Nedda,  when  she  went  marketing,  and  Marco,  going 
and  returning  from  work,  were  objects  of  approving 
regard,  for  Italians  are  quick  to  perceive  beauty 
and  love  it. 

Some  months  after  these  young  people  had  ar- 
rived in  this  new  land  of  opportunity,  Nedda  made 


4  THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 

a  discovery  and,  having  no  intimate  woman  friend 
to  whom  to  impart  it,  she  whispered  it  to  Marco, 
hiding  her  pretty  face  on  his  shoulder  as  she  did  so. 
It  was  a  very  momentous  little  secret  to  both  of 
them,  though  one  as  old  as  is  humanity  —  the  hope 
of  a  coming  joy,  a  new  little  life  between  them,  to 
bind  them  even  closer  to  each  other.  Marco  was 
filled  with  a  buoyant  courage  as  he  set  out  the  next 
morning,  for  the  coming  responsibility  had  brought 
a  greater  determination  into  his  life,  a  brighter 
glint  of  resolve  into  hie  eyes.  He  meant  to  be 
head  of  his  gang  of  Italians  in  the  street  depart- 
ment, and  that  before  long.  Indeed  even  now  he 
sometimes  directed  the  men  whenever  the  foreman 
was  absent. 

As  he  made  his  way  through  the  crowd  that  Feb- 
ruary morning  he  saw  an  unusual  number  of  people 
in  front  of  the  bulletin  boards  of  the  newspapers. 
Being  well  ahead  of  time  and  with  a  few  minutes  to 
spare,  he  stopped  and  listened  to  the  conversation 
about  him,  hoping  to  catch  something  of  the  latest 
war  news,  for  though  he  had  learned  to  speak  English 
brokenly,  he  was  still  unable  to  read  this  strange 
new  tongue. 

It  so  happened  that  next  to  him  among  the  by- 
standers was  an  Italian  workman  whom  he  knew 
slightly.  This  man  had  been  for  some  years  in  the 
United  States  and  both  read  and  spoke  English. 
To  Marco's  question  his  acquaintance  replied  briefly, 
but  with  startling  effect.  There  was  likelihood  of 
Italy  entering  the  Great  European  War  and  of 
joining  France  and  England  and  Russia  against 
Austria.      The    man    spat    as    he    spoke    the   latter 


THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA  5 

hated  name,  for  he  was  from  northern  Italy.  The 
bulletins  were  as  to  whether  Italy  would  be  drawn 
into  the  war  or  not.  "  If  our  nation  does  fight,  I 
may  not  have  to  go,  for  I  am  old,  but  you  will  be 
among  the  first  reservists  to  be  called  back.  You 
are  young  and  they  will  need  you  to  stop  the  Aus- 
trian bullets,"  Marco's  compatriot  continued  with  a 
laugh. 

Marco  did  not  reply,  but  started  on  with  a  heavy 
heart.  Called  away!  To  leave  his  little  Nedda, 
his  all,  alone  here  in  this  foreign  city  and  with  so 
little  money  and  no  help  from  him.  What  would 
she  do?  How  would  she  live,  a  stranger  not  know- 
ing the  country  or  even  its  language?  Marco 
turned  faint  for  the  first  time  in  his  life.  This 
big  swarthy  fellow  was  completely  unnerved  and 
sat  down  heavily  on  a  bench  on  the  Common  to 
think.  He  reviewed  the  situation  all  over  again: 
what  would  become  of  Nedda,  what  would  she  do,  if 
he  were  long  at  the  war  —  if  he  were  killed?  He  fore- 
saw how  helpless  she  would  be  alone  and  feared  that 
the  pittance  his  country  might  give  her  as  a  soldier's 
wife  during  his  absence  would  count  for  very  little 
in  this  expensive  land. 

The  more  he  dwelt  on  this  tragic  possibility  the 
more  hopeless  did  it  seem  for  his  poor  little  girl- 
wife,  and  a  bitter  resolve  began  to  form  in  his  mind 
—  to  refuse  his  country's  call  and  remain  to  protect 
her  and  their  child.  He  knew  it  would  mean  dis- 
honor forever,  and  his  face  saddened  into  deep  lines 
as  he  remembered  the  "  Hymn  of  Garibaldi  "  of  his 
childhood  days  and  thought  of  his  beloved  Italy,  per- 
haps soon  to  be  in  need  of  his  help  and  abandoned 


6  THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 

by  him  who  loved  her  so  dearly,  A  church  clock 
striking  the  hour  recalled  him  to  a  sense  of  his  pres- 
ent duty  and  he  proceeded  to  his  work,  but  with  a 
spiritless  step. 

When  he  returned  home  that  night  his  face  was 
set  in  an  expression  which  Nedda  had  never  seen, 
and  there  were  lines  which  she  had  not  noticed  be- 
fore. Quick  to  imagine,  she  feared  he  might  be  ill, 
and  the  more  so  as  he  ate  hardly  any  supper.  Then 
it  occurred  to  her  that  he  might  have  had  trouble 
with  the  foreman  or  even  lost  his  job,  for  she  knew 
that  the  city  was  at  that  time  economizing  and  that 
many  men  in  the  street  department  had  lately  been 
discharged.  She  said  nothing,  however,  for  with  true 
feminine  instinct  she  understood  that  he  Avould  rather 
tell  her  at  his  own  time  and  in  his  own  way,  but  her 
poor  little  face  lost  all  its  rosy  bloom  and  grew 
drawn  and  worried  as  she  waited  on  him. 

After  supper,  in  the  gaslight  in  the  bare  little 
room  which  had  become  so  endeared  to  them  both, 
he  told  her  very  gently  about  the  latest  news  of  the 
great  war,  of  the  possibility  of  Italy's  entering  the 
struggle,  and  of  the  probability  of  his  being  called 
back  to  fight,  if  Italy  became  involved. 

His  reference  to  the  war  did  not  startle  her,  for 
they  spoke  of  it  almost  daily;  but  when  he  men- 
tioned the  likelihood  of  Italy's  becoming  a  com- 
batant —  of  this  she  had  heard  nothing,  thought 
nothing  —  it  came  to  her  as  a  great  shock.  That 
Marco's  class  would  be  one  of  the  first  to  be  sum- 
moned she  realized  all  too  well.  She  kept  silent  for 
a  moment  and  crept  closer  to  him,  while  she  tried 
to   grasp  the  purport   of  his   words.      Her  Marco 


THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA  7 

gone  and  she  alone  in  this  strange  place !  The 
thought  of  her  loneliness  and  defencelessness  fright- 
ened her.  What  if  she  should  never  see  him  again? 
At  that  presentment  she  drew  still  more  fclosely  to 
him,  as  though,  even  then,  he  were  being  torn  from 
her. 

Soon  she  grew  calmer  in  the  protection  of  those 
strong  arms  and  could  comprehend  what  he  was 
saying  to  her.  He  was  telling  her  that  Italy  was 
not  yet  at  war,  might  never  engage  in  the  conflict, 
and  that  he  might  not  be  recalled.  And  if  he  were 
forced  to  return  it  might  not  be  until  the  summer, 
and  there  would  be  enough  money  to  see  her  through 
her  childbirth  and  well  again.  Then  there  would  be 
an  allowance  for  her  from  the  Italian  government; 
that  was  certain.  He  did  not  know  how  much,  but 
it  might  be  more  for  those  wives  of  reservists  who 
were  living  in  this  land  which  was  so  dear  for  all  to 
live  in,  and  perhaps  it  would  be  sufficient. 

Nedda,  however,  found  it  hard  to  be  comforted 
and  clung  to  him  the  more  as  she  protested  that 
she  could  not  remain  without  him,  and  that  she 
would  go  back  with  him  on  the  boat  as  far  as  Sicily, 
among  her  own  people,  where  she  would  feel  safe  and 
at  home. 

Marco  petted  her  and  kissed  her  sad  little  tear- 
stained  face,  for  he  felt  that  what  she  proposed 
could  not  be  encouraged.  As  the  wife  of  a  reservist, 
even  if  she  were  allowed  to  sail  with  him,  the  cost  of 
her  return  would  absorb  some  of  their  small  savings, 
and  if,  at  the  end  of  the  war,  the  remainder  had  been 
exhausted  for  her  support  and  that  of  the  baby  so 
soon  to  arrive,  it  might  be  impossible  for  them  to 


8  THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 

find  money  for  the  expense  of  another  emigration 
to  America.  Furthermore  the  contest  might  not 
last  very  long,  and  in  that  event  it  would  have  been 
the  height  of  folly  to  have  broken  up  their  life  in 
their  new  home  in  a  country  where  he  meant  to  pros- 
per and  grow  rich.  They  would  have  lost  a  chance 
which  might  never  be  theirs  again,  and  his  pride 
stiffened  at  the  thought  of  their  returning  thus  from 
a  land  to  which  they  had  sailed  away  with  such  high 
hopes. 

It  was  late  when  Nedda  grew  calmer,  soothed  by 
his  tenderness.  They  went  to  bed,  but  not  to  sleep. 
Though  he  lay  very  still,  so  as  not  to  disturb  her, 
all  the  terrible  possibilities  of  their  future  held 
Satanic  carnival  in  his  mind  —  how  to  shield  her, 
how  to  support  her  while  he  was  away,  perhaps  for  a 
year,  perhaps  longer.  Then  the  darkest  thought  of 
all  confronted  him  again  with  sinister  countenance 
—  what  if  he  were  killed !  Nedda  seemed  to  sleep 
at  first,  but  later  he  knew  that  she  was  awake  and 
that  she  was  crying.  He  thought  it  best  to  make 
no  effort  at  consolation ;  perhaps  she  would  drop 
off  to  sleep  tired  out.  This  she  seemed  to  do  after 
a  time,  and  when  he  was  sure  of  it,  he  praised  God. 
She  sleeps,  he  thought,  my  poor  little  wife.  Her 
heart  is  with  the  angels. 

When  it  was  morning  he  arose  quietly  and  lighted 
the  fire  almost  noiselessly  and  had  the  kettle 
boiling  before  Nedda  awoke  and  got  up  hastily, 
looking  very  pinched  and  worn.  She  thanked  him 
and  called  him  her  good  Marco,  but  nothing  was 
said  of  the  subject  that  was  in  both  their  minds  and 
lay  so  heavily  across  their  hearts.     And  thus  it  was 


THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA  9 

during  the  weeks  and  months  that  followed;  while 
all  the  Italian  quarter  was  chattering  daily  like  a 
big  family  of  magpies  over  the  war  and  the  pros- 
pects of  Italy's  becoming  engaged,  in  this  one  little 
household  the  dreaded  matter  was  rarely  mentioned, 
though  its  dark  shadow  stood  always  beside  them. 


n 

WINTER  had  passed  and  it  was  May,  a  beauti- 
ful, warm  May  for  New  England,  like  an 
Italian  April.  The  time  of  Nedda's  confinement 
was  drawing  near  when  Marco  returned  rather  later 
than  usual  one  evening  from  his  work.  He  seemed 
very  tired  and  quite  dazed  and  Nedda  thought  he 
smelt  somewhat  strongly  of  wine,  a  thing  she  had 
never  before  noticed  in  him.  After  a  little  the  truth 
came  out.  Italy  was  to  enter  the  conflict  and  was 
summoning  her  reserves;  his  class  came  first  and 
might  be  called  any  day.  He  pulled  a  much  tattered 
newspaper  from  his  pocket  and  showed  her  the  para- 
graph, of  which,  being  in  English,  she  could  not  read 
a  word. 

Never  had  she  seen  him  like  this ;  he  seemed  dis- 
mayed, broken,  and  hardly  capable  of  facing  the 
crisis,  and  then  she  understood  how  much  he  must 
have  suffered  for  her  in  all  these  weary  months  of 
waiting  and  harrowing  doubt.  He  muttered  to  him- 
self at  times  rather  than  spoke  to  her,  saying  over 
and  over  again  something  about  "  Italia  "  and  "  La 
Patria,"  and  then  he  turned  to  her  and  drew  her  to 
him.  So  great  was  her  distress  for  him  that  she 
forgot  her  own  situation  and,  putting  her  arms 
around  his  shoulders  and  her  face  against  his,  prom- 
ised to  be  brave  and  tried  to  persuade  him  that  all 
would  be  well  with  her  until  his  return. 


THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA  11 

Two  days  later  that  which  she  so  much  feared  be- 
came a  certainty  —  his  class  was  called.  It  was  an- 
nounced in  Boston's  weekly  Italian  newspaper,  the 
"  Gazzetta  del  Massachusetts."  It  appea^red  to  her 
that  her  heart  stopped  beating  when  he  told  her. 
She  was  silent,  stupefied  by  a  paralyzing  fear,  which 
seemed  to  make  speech  or  action  impossible.  She  felt 
that,  if  she  could  only  cry  out,  it  would  be  a  relief, 
but  she  was  as  though  frozen,  speechless,  and  words 
were  now  as  impossible  to  her  as  tears.  She  went 
about  her  daily  duties  as  usual,  but  almost  uncon- 
sciously, for  a  pitiless,  relentless  voice  was  constantly 
repeating  in  her  ear,  "  He  is  called !     He  is  called !  " 

She  tried  to  pray,  but  she  could  not  collect  her 
thoughts  sufficiently  to  do  so.  Before,  in  those  days 
of  suspense,  of  uncertainty,  she  had  been  able  to  find 
relief  in  tears  and  in  prayers,  but  now  she  was  so 
numb,  so  powerless  to  give  expression  to  all  that  she 
felt,  that  she  seemed  to  herself  hardly  to  feel,  hardly 
to  live.  She  went  into  the  Italian  church  near  by, 
a  quiet  place  where  she  had  always  found  help,  but 
its  peace  and  sanctity  seemed  to  mean  nothing  to  her 
now  and  held  no  refuge  from  that  terrible  voice, 
"  He  is  called !    He  is  called !  " 

When  Marco  was  at  home  she  did  her  best  to  talk 
and  appear  as  usual,  as  though  his  going  were  a 
commonplace  thing  over  which  they  need  not  worry. 
She  purchased  wool  and  made  him  new  socks,  mended 
and  cleaned  his  clothes,  and  packed  his  small  valise 
half  a  dozen  times  over  before  the  time  of  parting 
came. 

Though  Marco  seemed  to  be  reassured  by  his 
little  wife's  calmness  and  apparent  resignation,  he 


12  THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 

was  not  deceived.  He  knew  how  she  was  being  tor- 
tured by  apprehension  and  despair,  and  watching  her 
uncomplaining  anguish  wrung  his  heart.  He  said 
nothing,  however,  there  was  so  little  to  be  said  in 
the  face  of  this  great  calamity ;  so  he  bore  it  in  a 
silence  which  was  almost  as  undemonstrative  as  hers. 
Previously,  when  that  which  had  come  to  pass  was 
impending,  he  had  talked  much  of  the  briefness  of 
their  possible  separation,  of  the  certainty  of  his 
return ;  but  now  that  they  stood  face  to  face  with 
the  fact  of  his  departure  for  the  front  and  all  the 
dangers  and  obscurity  of  the  future,  words  seemed 
meaningless.  Around  them  the  quarter  was  hum- 
ming like  a  hive,  but  here,  in  their  tiny  nest,  these 
two  young  souls  were  mute  and  overwhelmed. 

Before  his  class  was  called  Marco  had  debated 
many  times  in  his  mind  whether  it  would  not  be 
better  to  turn  his  back  on  his  native  land  and  remain 
with  Nedda.  Now  that  the  summons  had  come,  how- 
ever, he  knew  that  he  could  not  disobey,  and  he  felt 
that  greatly  as  she  suffered,  Nedda  would  not  have 
him  deny  that  summons.  They  were  Latins,  these 
two,  and  love  of  country  is  the  hall-mark  of  the 
Latin  race.  The  call  of  a  hundred  generations  was 
pulsing  in  his  blood  and  he  knew  he  must  go. 

A  visit  to  the  Italian  consul  was  followed  by  a 
short  notification  two  days  later  that  Marco  would 
be  sent  back  on  Friday  of  the  next  week  by  the 
Cretic,  which  would  sail  from  Boston  direct  to  Pa- 
lermo and  Naples;  that  was  in  just  six  days'  time. 
Only  on  hearing  this  news  did  Nedda  break  the  bonds 
of  passivity  which  seemed  to  pin  her  down.  When 
she  comprehended  that  in  a  week's  time  she  would  be 


THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA  13 

alone,  she  gave  a  low,  half-sobbing  moan  and  flung 
herself  upon  him,  clinging  to  him  and  shuddering, 
and  for  a  long  time  he  found  it  impossible  to  calm 
her.  When  at  last  she  grew  quiet  it  hurt, him  to  see 
her,  there  was  such  a  look  in  her  face.  Her  features 
seemed  cut  from  wax,  they  were  so  immobile  and 
colorless.  Was  this  his  little  Nedda  who,  a  few  short 
weeks  ago,  had  been  all  sparkle  and  cheerfulness  and 
response .'' 

He  found  relief  in  busying  himself  about  whatever 
needed  to  be  done  in  the  way  of  preparation.  He 
asked  at  the  city  Office  of  Works  for  the  six  months' 
leave  of  absence  which  was  allowed  in  such  cases 
from  the  department  he  was  serving,  and  also  trans- 
ferred his  savings  in  the  Italian  bank  near  where 
they  lived  to  Nedda's  name,  so  that  she  could  draw 
them  out  as  she  needed  them.  These  gradual  ac- 
cumulations amounted  to  two  hundred  and  forty 
dollars,  part  of  which  he  had  brought  from  Italy. 
He  drew  just  ten  dollars  to  take  with  him  for  pocket 
money,  which  he  got  changed  into  Italian  coin,  and 
the  balance  of  two  hundred  and  thirty  dollars  re- 
mained for  Nedda.  He  believed  that  this  would  more 
than  suffice  for  her  confinement  and  the  first  months 
with  the  little  one,  and  after  that  he  might  be  back, 
who  knew-f*  The  smallness  of  the  amount  worried 
him,  however.  Two  hundred  and  thirty  dollars  would 
have  seemed  a  fortune  to  Marco  in  Italy,  but  he 
knew  the  cost  of  living  in  this  strangely  expensive 
land,  and  experience  had  changed  his  standard  of 
values. 

Shortly  before  Marco  left  he  drew  Nedda  very 
tenderly  to  his  side  one  evening  and  talked  to  her 


14  THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 

of  the  future  quite  frankly  and  simply.  He  advised 
her  as  best  he  could  what  she  was  to  do  during  his 
absence  and  in  case  he  should  never  return.  He 
counselled  her  above  all  to  try  to  leam  English,  so 
that,  if  it  became  necessary  later,  she  might  the  more 
readily  find  work.  But  at  present,  of  course,  there 
would  be  preparations  for  the  baby  to  take  up  her 
time.  He  had  made  inquiries  and  gave  her  the  ad- 
dress of  an  Italian  doctor  in  the  quarter  whom  she 
could  send  for  when  the  hour  of  trial  came.  Then 
there  was  a  woman  living  in  the  apartment  below 
them  whom  they  knew  slightly  and  who  might  be  of 
help.  That  would  be  better  than  a  hospital,  for 
Marco  had  a  horror  of  hospitals,  where  he  believed 
there  was  small  consideration  for  the  poor,  and  be- 
sides he  had  been  told  that,  as  a  foreigner,  it  would 
be  more  difficult  for  Nedda  to  get  admittance  into 
one. 

He  seemed  to  have  foreseen  everything  in  his  love 
for  her,  and  it  was  easy  to  see  that  he  had  given  all 
the  details  serious  thought.  Above  all  he  admon- 
ished her  to  beware  of  new  friends  here  among 
strangers,  for  Marco  had  had  many  glimpses  of  life 
in  the  streets  of  this  great  place  and  he  realized  how 
young  and  inexperienced  his  little  Nedda  was.  "  And 
now,"  he  concluded,  "  to-morrow  is  to  be  our  last 
day  together  before  I  leave,  and  it  must  be  our  holi- 
day, dearest.  We  shall  go  down  by  the  sea  and  sit 
there  all  day  long  and  watch  the  waves  and  the  sky, 
and  it  shall  be  a  never-forgotten  day  for  us  both." 

So  on  the  following  day,  a  brilliant  morning  in 
early  June,  they  took  the  daily  excursion  boat  for  one 
of  the  great  beaches  on  the  south  shore,  near  the  city. 


THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA  15 

and  after  a  delightful  sail  down  the  harbor  they 
found  themselves  seated  on  the  wide  crescent  of  shin- 
ing sand.  What  happy  hours  those  were,  sitting 
there  together  in  the  sunlight,  breathing  in  fresh 
salt  breezes  and  watching  occasional  gulls  pass  by ! 
Marco  had  decided  well,  for  Nedda  almost  forgot 
her  trouble;  he  seemed  so  near  to  her  and  the  day 
was  so  sparkling  and  gay.  They  ate  a  fish  dinner  at 
a  small  restaurant,  the  only  one  open  at  that  early 
season  of  the  year,  and  they  had  their  pictures  taken 
together  by  a  beach  photographer,  as  a  last  souvenir. 
Marco  promised  that  he  would  wear  his  copy  next 
to  his  heart  always,  while  Nedda  made  up  her  mind 
she  would  put  hers  beside  her  bed,  just  below  the 
picture  of  the  Madonna,  where  she  could  look  at  it 
a  hundred  times  a  day.  And  so  it  passed,  that 
bright,  cheerful,  parting  day  between  this  boy  and 
girl,  husband  and  wife. 

It  was  only  when  they  had  returned  to  their  little 
tenement  in  the  North  End  that  the  shadow  of  ap- 
prehension began  to  deepen  again  and  the  fearful 
heartache  of  approaching  parting  blanched  Nedda's 
cheeks  and  chilled  her  through  and  through.  She 
clung  to  him  despairingly  all  through  the  night,  as 
though  she  could  never  let  him  leave  her,  for  she  was 
conscious  that  every  hour  was  bringing  her  nearer 
to  the  moment  of  which  she  could  not  even  bear  to 
think. 

The  vessel  was  to  sail  from  South  Boston  at  three 
o'clock,  from  the  same  dock  at  which  they  had  ar- 
rived but  little  more  than  a  year  ago,  so  happy  and 
hopeful  and  enthusiastic.  Marco  had  asked  the 
woman  in  the  flat  below,  Mrs.  Gallo,  to  go  to  the 


16  THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 

boat  with  them,  so  that  Nedda  might  have  someone 
to  return  home  with  her;  and  thus  everything  was 
arranged  for  the  departure.  Most  of  the  reservists 
intended  to  march  in  a  body  to  the  wharf  with  a 
band,  but  Marco  preferred  to  be  with  Nedda  till  the 
last  moment  possible,  and  so  was  not  to  join  in  the 
procession. 

The  next  morning  was  a  time  of  bustle  and  excite- 
ment, which  helped  them  both  to  bear  up  as  the  final 
hours  ticked  away.  Two  other  reservists  were  leav- 
ing from  the  same  tenement  house,  and  there  was 
much  movement  and  many  animated  discussions  on 
landings  and  stairs.  Marco  had  to  go  to  the  con- 
sulate for  his  papers  and  other  little  preparations 
had  to  be  made.  Nedda  was  very  calm  and  collected, 
more  so  than  she  had  ever  been;  she  seemed  to  be 
attending  to  the  various  details  in  an  almost  im- 
personal way. 

It  was  only  when  she  had  fastened  the  little  ribbon 
rosette  in  Italian  colors,  which  she  had  made,  in 
Marco's  buttonhole  that  she  suddenly  flung  herself 
on  his  breast  and  clung  to  him  in  a  passion  of  weep- 
ing. In  a  few  hours  she  would  be  alone,  alone  in 
this  strange  land,  so  far  from  home  and  friends,  and 
with  no  one  to  protect  her  and  love  her.  The  feeling 
of  his  big  firm  chest  against  her,  of  his  strong  man's 
arms  around  her,  brought  to  her  still  more  over- 
whelmingly the  sense  of  her  coming  defencelessness 
and  isolation.  He,  her  Marco,  to  be  taken  so  far 
away  from  her,  into  danger,  perhaps  to  death,  and 
she,  inexperienced,  alone,  amid  strangers,  about  to 
become  a  mother,  with  no  work  and  no  means  of 
getting  any,  not  even  knowing  the  language  of  this 


THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA  17 

country,  what  was  to  become  of  her?  She  shook 
against  him  in  a  convulsion  of  anguish  and  despair, 
holding  him  to  her  as  though  she  could  never  let 
him  go.  "  Marco  mio,  Marco  caro.  No,  no,  no," 
she  repeated  again  and  again,  as  though  putting  the 
thought  of  the  inevitable  far,  far  away  from  her. 
Marco  was  silent;  with  a  man's  reticence  he  found 
words  difficult  and  his  own  emotion  was  so  great 
that  he  dared  not  trust  himself  to  speak.  He  stroked 
the  small  head  with  his  hard,  work-worn  hand,  with 
a  tenderness  that  seemed  to  soothe  her,  for  after  a 
few  minutes  her  agitation  quieted  and  she  was  cry- 
ing silently  against  his  breast  and  nestling  there  as 
a  tired  child,  whose  weariness  had  found  refuge  in 
a  safe  shelter. 

A  knock  at  the  door  interrupted  them.  It  was 
one  of  the  other  reservists  come  to  speak  to  Marco. 
He  was  glad  of  the  intrusion,  for  it  had  seemed  to 
him  that  he  could  never  put  her  from  him,  and  when 
he  moved  as  though  to  do  so  she  held  to  him  so 
despairingly  that  each  moment  seemed  to  make  it 
harder  to  release  her.  He  kept  the  other  man  in 
conversation  until  he  believed  that  the  crisis  had 
passed,  and  when  the  visitor  had  gone  Nedda  was 
again  herself  and  already  occupied  in  cooking  the 
dinner. 

They  left  for  the  pier  about  two  o'clock.  Marco 
said  there  was  no  need  to  start  earlier.  The  other 
woman,  Mrs.  Gallo,  was  with  them  when  INIarco 
turned  the  key  in  the  kitchen  door  and  gave  it  to 
Nedda  and  they  went  down  the  narrow  stairway. 
Even  in  the  dim  light  of  the  stair  landing  Marco 
saw  that  Nedda  was  very  white,  but  she  said  noth- 


18  THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 

ing  and  seemed  to  have  regained  her  habitual  com- 
posure. Marco  was  thankful,  for  he  felt  that  he 
could  not  bear  another  scene  like  that  of  tlie  morn- 
ing. If  she  threw  herself  again  into  his  arms  in 
such  a  way,  he  feared  that  he  would  desert  country 
and  duty  and  everything  and  remain  with  her. 

The  long  walk  across  the  city  to  the  wharf  was  a 
good  thing  for  them  both.  It  braced  them  and 
diverted  their  thoughts,  and  when  they  arrived  at 
the  pier  the  large  crowd  of  reservists  and  those  see- 
ing them  off,  who  were  already  assembled  there,  made 
intimate  talk  impossible.  Nedda  clung  very  close  to 
Marco,  but  she  remained  calm  and  for  the  most  part 
silent.  Marco  was  furthermore  encumbered  by  his 
heavy  valise,  which  acted  as  a  barrier  to  hold  them 
a  little  apart,  and  the  presence  of  Mrs.  Gallo,  who 
was  talkative,  necessitated  only  general  remarks. 
Soon  the  main  body  of  reservists  appeared  marching 
onto  the  dock,  headed  by  the  band  playing  the 
"  Hymn  of  Garibaldi  "  with  deafening  gusto,  and  this 
added  to  the  excitement  around  them.  Marco  seemed 
to  have  caught  some  of  it,  for  his  eyes  sparkled  and 
Nedda  thought  with  a  pang  that  he  had  never  looked 
more  handsome.  She  had  made  up  her  mind  to  be 
brave  if  she  could,  and  the  music  somehow  gave  her 
courage. 

The  time  was  short  now;  most  of  the  reservists 
were  already  aboard  and  the  others  were  saying  the 
final  good-byes  on  all  sides  of  them.  Marco  put 
down  his  valise  and  came  quite  close  to  Nedda.  He 
took  her  hand  and  held  it  very  firmly.  She  was 
trembling,  but  she  remained  quiet.  Then  the  word 
"  All  aboard  "  was  given  and  he  stooped  to  give  her 


THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA  19 

the  final  kiss.  He  murmured  in  her  ear  a  few  words 
of  such  comfort  as  he  could  think  of,  "  I  will  return 
soon.  Do  not  fear,  my  dear  one,"  and  then  he  was 
gone. 

She  had  not  been  able  to  utter  a  syllable  in  reply, 
and  after  he  had  left  her  she  remained  motionless 
and  silent,  staring  at  the  great  ship  as  one  fascinated 
and  without  realization  of  her  whereabouts.  It  was 
not  till  the  other  woman  touched  her  that  she  fully 
understood  that  it  was  over,  that  she  was  alone.  The 
boat  began  to  move  out  from  its  moorings  amid  a 
babel  of  cries  and  cheers,  which  almost  drowned  the 
Italian  "  Royal  March  "  played  by  the  band  at  its 
loudest.  Nedda  remained  standing  where  she  was, 
seemingly  oblivious  of  it  all.  Mrs.  Gallo  thought  she 
recognized  Marco  waving  from  the  deck  and  pointed 
him  out  to  Nedda.  This  seemed  to  rouse  her,  for  she 
took  off  her  shawl  and  waved  it  back  at  him,  but  still 
she  acted  almost  as  one  in  sleep.  When  the  vessel 
had  passed  out  of  sight  and  most  persons  had 
trooped  off  the  dock,  Nedda  yet  remained  standing 
and  gazing  ahead  of  her,  where  the  great  black  mon- 
ster had  been  which  had  swallowed  up  her  Marco. 
Finally  her  companion  took  her  by  the  arm  and 
turned  away,  and  Nedda  obeyed  mechanically  and 
accompanied  her. 


Ill 

How  she  got  home  Nedda  never  knew,  for  she  pos- 
sessed no  distinct  recollection  of  returning,  and 
the  next  thing  she  realized  she  was  alone  in  her  little 
bedroom,  on  her  knees,  praying  to  the  picture  of  the 
Madonna  over  the  bed.  How  long  she  prayed  she 
had  no  idea;  she  was  not  sure  whether  she  prayed 
all  the  time.  Finally  her  knees  ached  and  she  crawled 
onto  her  bed  and  lay  there  in  a  misery  of  weeping 
and  despair.  At  last  she  fell  asleep  through  sheer 
exhaustion,  and  when  she  awoke  it  was  dark  and 
only  a  faint  glimmer  of  light  from  the  court  below 
came  through  the  window.  Her  head  ached  and 
throbbed  and  she  had  no  desire  to  get  up ;  then  she 
slept  again,  a  troubled  sleep  of  unhappy  dreams, 
and  did  not  awake  until  morning. 

She  was  hungry  and  faint,  so  she  got  up  and  built 
a  fire  and  made  herself  some  coffee.  She  could  hardly 
swallow  it,  however,  and  felt  as  though  she  had  not 
the  courage  to  face  her  lonely  life  and  would  be 
glad  to  crawl  back  to  bed  again  and  lie  there  till 
she  died. 

At  eight  o'clock  Mrs.  Gallo  came  to  see  her,  and 
this  forced  her  a  little  out  of  herself.  The  good 
woman  was  apparently  shocked  by  Nedda's  appear- 
ance and  in  her  rough  way  tried  to  mother  her.  This 
would  never  do.  It  was  washing  day  and  Nedda 
must  get  on  with  her  washing  at  once.     What  would 


THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA  21 

Marco  say  if  he  saw  her  like  this?  Thus  by  her 
practical  but  kindly  sympathy  the  older  woman 
forced  the  younger  to  face  the  realities  of  life,  bitter 
though  they  were. 

It  was  days,  however,  before  Nedda  became  accus- 
tomed to  the  loneliness  and  sense  of  isolation  and 
the  vague,  indefinable  fears  which  haunted  her.  She 
tried  to  be  brave,  but  she  was  little  more  than  a  girl 
and  it  was  hard  to  be  strong  all  alone.  Many  times 
she  lay  sobbing  on  her  bed  at  night  until  she  fell 
asleep  worn  out,  only  to  wake  up  even  more  lonely 
and  heart-weary  than  when  she  went  to  bed. 

She  found  that  she  was  happiest  when  she  tried 
to  follow  Marco  in  her  thoughts  and  to  feel  almost 
as  though  she  were  with  him.  Now  he  was  in  the 
middle  of  the  ocean,  probably  sitting  on  deck  smok- 
ing. Was  he  thinking  of  her,  longing  for  her  as 
much  as  she  longed  for  him?  Was  he  so  unhappy 
as  she  was?  She  prayed  not.  Now  he  was  in  the 
Mediterranean,  where  it  was  warm  and  sunny  and 
beautiful.  He  must  be  quite  cheerful  there,  looking 
out  on  the  sparkling  waters.  By  this  time  he  was  at 
Palermo,  back  in  their  own  lovely  Sicily.  He  was 
landing  now.  She  wondered  whether  he  had  been 
allowed  to  go  home  for  a  day  before  joining  the  colors. 
Perhaps  so.  He  might  be  even  then  in  their  little 
home  town  among  the  hills,  looking  down,  as  from 
the  gallery  of  a  theatre,  the  beautiful  sweeping  valley 
of  the  Conca  d'Oro  to  distant  Palermo,  yellow  in  the 
sunshine,  and  the  blue,  blue  sea  beyond.  Of  course 
he  was  with  their  relatives  and  friends ;  how  glad 
they  must  be  to  see  him  and  how  they  would  want 
to  know  all  about  her.      She  wondered  whether  he 


22  THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 

would  tell  anyone  her  secret.  Perhaps  he  would  con- 
fide in  her  old  grandmother.  She  rather  hoped  he 
would.  She  wanted  someone  whom  she  loved  to  know 
of  her  great  approaching  happiness  and  that  she 
would  not  be  quite  alone  in  this  far-away  land.  He 
would  surely  inform  the  dear  old  priest  who  had 
married  them,  and  maybe  the  priest  would  write 
her  a  letter  full  of  good  counsel  and  help,  for  he 
could  write  very  well;  she  had  seen  his  writing,  in 
an  even,  clear  hand,  in  the  parish  book.  In  such 
musings  poor  little  Nedda  found  some  solace  in  her 
loneliness,  though  these  thoughts  of  Marco  and  home 
often  ended  in  a  realization  of  her  own  position  and 
in  tears. 

However,  the  days  wore  on  and  slowly  but  surely 
the  great  event  was  drawing  near.  Mrs.  Gallo  said 
that  Nedda  must  go  to  see  a  physician  and  arrange 
with  him  for  his  assistance  when  the  hour  arrived. 
So,  accompanied  by  that  good  woman,  Nedda  went 
to  see  the  one  whose  address  Marco  had  given  her. 
They  climbed  a  dusty  stairway  in  a  building  on  a 
near-by  thoroughfare.  The  doctor  was  seated  in 
a  rather  dingy  office,  surrounded  by  several  men 
cronies,  all  of  whom  were  apparently  deep  in  a  politi- 
cal or  war  discussion  when  the  two  women  entered. 
As  soon  as  he  comprehended  that  he  had  a  patient 
he  made  a  sign  to  the  other  men,  who  withdrew  into 
an  adjoining  room. 

The  doctor  was  fat,  middle-aged,  easy-going,  and 
very  Italian,  with  an  intelligent  head  and  a  kindly, 
open  face.  He  asked  Nedda  a  good  many  questions, 
some  of  which  seemed  of  a  more  general  than  a  medi- 
cal nature,  for  he  was  evidently  a  curious  man,  who 


THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA  23 

took  a  personal  interest  in  his  patients.  What  was 
her  age?  Seventeen,  a  mere  baby;  they  ought  not 
to  have  let  her  marry  so  young.  Married  in  Italy; 
ah,  yes,  that  was  the  way  they  did  it  in  Italy.  When 
did  she  expect  the  baby?  A  month;  so  soon! 
Where  in  Italy  was  she  from  ?  Sicily,  yes ;  she  had 
the  accent.  The  good  man  seemed  in  no  hurry  to 
terminate  the  conversation  with  this  very  young  and 
very  pretty  little  patient. 

Finally,  as  he  stopped  to  relight  his  cigar,  Nedda 
found  courage  to  ask  him  the  momentous  ques- 
tion. How  much  would  he  charge  her?  She  hated 
to  do  it,  but  she  knew  she  must,  with  so  little  money 
in  the  bank  and  Marco  so  far  away.  The  doctor 
eyed  her  shrewdly,  but  not  in  an  unkindly  manner. 
How  much  did  her  husband  earn?  She  told  him 
that  her  Marco  had  already  been  called  home  to  Italy 
to  join  the  army  and  that  she  was  alone  and  had 
very  little  money.  He  took  his  cigar  out  of  his 
mouth  and  made  an  exclamation  —  it  sounded  like 
an  imprecation  against  the  war  —  and  muttered 
something  about  her  being  too  young  to  be  left  in 
this  way.  He  considered  a  moment  and  said  in  a 
voice  which  he  intended  to  be  very  matter  of  fact: 
"  My  charge  will  be  ten  dollars  and  your  husband 
can  pay  me  when  he  comes  back  and  gets  to  work 
again." 

Nedda  was  very  grateful  and  began  to  try  to 
thank  him  for  his  goodness,  while  Mrs.  Gallo  also 
became  voluble  in  his  praise;  but  he  cut  them  short 
rather  abruptly,  saying,  "  When  you  need  me,  send 
for  me  and  I  shall  be  there."  With  that  he  got  up 
from  his  chair  and  called  to  his  compatriots  in  the 


24  THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 

other  room,  which  was  a  sign  that  the  visit  was  at 
an  end.  Nedda  and  Mrs.  Gallo  arose  and  left  the 
room  as  the  three  men  returned,  still  in  the  midst 
of  their  discussion,  in  which  the  doctor  immediately 
joined. 

Nedda  was  greatly  relieved  by  the  thought  that 
she  would  be  protected  in  her  hour  of  trial  by  the 
old  doctor,  for  her  woman's  intuition  told  her  that 
he  was  kindness  itself,  and  his  offer  to  trust  her  for 
his  services  until  Marco  came  back  still  further  eased 
her  mind.  She  even  found  it  in  her  heart  to  sing 
a  little  as  she  sat  at  her  window,  busy  making  some 
very  diminutive  garments,  sewing  away  with  that 
pleasure  which  most  Italian  women  find  in  the  use 
of  their  needle,  and  with  a  look  on  her  face  which 
comes  only  once  in  a  woman's  life.  A  subject  for 
an  etching,  this  young  girl,  as  she  sat  in  the  half- 
light  of  the  tiny  room,  bending  patiently  over  her 
work,  with  graceful  dip  of  neck  and  shoulders  and 
an  expression  of  combined  tenderness,  submission, 
and  expectancy  on  her  face. 

The  baby  was  born  at  night,  and  within  a  couple 
of  hours  mother  and  child  were  pronounced  to  be 
doing  well  and  the  doctor  had  left  them  in  the  care 
of  Mrs.  Gallo,  with  a  promise  to  return  after  break- 
fast. Mrs.  Gallo  was  more  voluble  than  ever  in  her 
raptures  over  Nedda  and  the  baby,  whom  she  an- 
nounced as  an  undoubted  prize-winner,  and  in  her 
encomiums  on  the  good  doctor,  who  she  declared 
must  become  the  baby's  godfather. 

It  was  a  fine  strong  boy,  weighing  nearly  nine 
pounds  and  very  hungry  and  active,  who  appeared 
upon   the   scene,    apparently   determined   to   have   a 


THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA  26 

share  in  all  that  went  on  about  him.  Nedda  was 
too  happy  for  words  and  could  not  bear  to  give  him 
up  again  when,  after  some  hours,  he  was  finally  put 
in  her  arms.  Until  she  was  allowed  to  have  him, 
however,  Mrs.  Gallo  appropriated  him  and  made  a 
great  to-do  about  his  bath  and  dressing  and  attend- 
ing to  him  and  seemed  indeed  almost  as  pleased  by 
his  arrival  as  was  Nedda.  The  poor  woman  was  a 
good  soul,  and  the  coming  of  the  baby  took  her  back 
to  her  own  days  of  young  motherhood  and  warmed 
her  heart  by  the  remembrance,  besides  giving  her 
something  to  do ;  for  she  was  a  lonely  old  creature, 
living  with  a  married  daughter,  who  gave  her  little 
consideration  or  affection. 

Two  days  after  baby  came  Nedda  sat  up  in  a 
chair,  and  within  a  week  she  was  up  daily,  moving 
about  her  tiny  flat  much  as  usual.  She  did  not  as 
yet  go  out  a  great  deal,  however,  as  Mrs.  Gallo  was 
doing  Nedda's  marketing  for  her.  The  baby  was 
the  personification  of  health  and  vigor  and  divided 
his  time  between  "  yum-yum  "  and  "  do-do  "  with  the 
keenest  satisfaction.  He  seldom  cried,  but  when  he 
did  he  entered  into  the  full  spirit  of  the  performance 
and  did  justice  to  a  very  sound  pair  of  lungs. 

The  christening  took  place  when  he  was  about  a 
week  old,  in  the  basement  chapel  of  the  near-by  Ital- 
ian church.  Mrs.  Gallo  and  the  doctor  were  the  spon- 
sors. The  former,  carrying  the  baby,  went  with 
Nedda  to  the  church,  and  the  doctor  met  them  there 
at  the  appointed  hour.  The  priest,  a  busy  man  with 
a  large  parish  and  many  duties,  kept  them  waiting 
a  few  minutes,  during  which  time  the  baby  protested 
vigorously  at  these  unusual  proceedings,  but  through- 


26  THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 

out  the  actual  christening  he  behaved  perfectly  and 
Nedda  was  quite  the  proudest  of  little  mothers.  As 
soon  as  the  service  was  concluded  the  doctor  was 
obliged  to  hurry  away,  after  kissing  his  new  godson 
and  pinching  Nedda's  cheek  in  a  fatherly  way.  So 
Nedda  paid  the  christening  fee  and  returned  home 
with  Mrs.  Gallo,  who  still  insisted  on  carrying  the 
little  Michele  for  her,  and  indeed  mothered  Nedda 
quite  as  much  as  she  did  the  infant. 

Nedda's  happiness  with  her  baby  would  have  been 
a  beautiful  thing  to  the  onlooker,  if  there  had  been 
anyone  to  see  it.  She  was  radiant  in  this  new-found 
joy.  She  prayed  to  her  little  picture  of  the  Madonna 
with  devout  thankfulness  for  the  goodness  which  had 
given  her  a  bambino  to  comfort  her  just  when  her 
heart  was  breaking  for  Marco.  She  spent  hours  look- 
ing at  this  tiny  pink  and  white  bundle,  telling  herself 
over  and  over  again  that  it  was  a  boy  and  that  it 
was  really  hers,  even  running  from  her  work  just  to 
look  at  him  and  caress  him  and  pat  his  little  face 
and  play  a  moment  with  his  little  toes.  His  eyes 
were  like  Marco's,  great,  dark,  lustrous  eyes,  and 
his  nose  too  was  like  Marco's,  or  would  be  when  he 
was  older,  she  was  sure.  His  mouth  was  like  hers, 
with  a  distinct  arch  to  it,  but  then  a  mouth  did  not 
much  matter;  it  was  just  to  kiss,  and  while  she 
kissed  his  mouth  she  could  look  at  his  eyes,  Marco's 
eyes.  How  she  loved  it,  her  baby.  How  near  she 
felt  to  Marco,  so  far  away,  when  she  had  her  boy, 
his  boy,  in  her  arms.  Did  the  Madonna  in  the  picture 
love  hers  more.''  Could  any  woman  love  hers  more, 
she  wondered.  Did  any  other  woman,  save  the  dear 
Madonna,  ever  have  so  beautiful  a  babv?    How  could 


Nedda's  Madonna 


THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA  27 

there  be  another  baby  so  beautiful?  Was  he  not 
Marco's  baby,  and  was  not  Marco,  her  Marco,  the 
handsomest  and  bravest  fellow  in  all  the  world  — 
her  husband,  her  Marco,  now  fighting  xso  coura- 
geously for  his  country? 

Thus,  while  she  hugged  her  baby  close,  her  thoughts 
would  revert  to  Marco.  Was  he  safe  ?  Was  he  well  ? 
She  had  been  told  that  they  fed  the  soldiers  gener- 
ously. How  happy  she  was  for  that;  he  was  not 
hungry.  He  must  be  at  the  front  by  now,  after 
nearly  three  months'  training,  and  it  would  be  cold 
where  he  was,  up  in  the  north  of  Italy  among  the 
mountains.  She  hoped  he  had  received  and  was 
wearing  the  woollen  scarf  and  socks  she  had  knitted 
for  him.  If  he  had  only  written  she  would  be  relieved ; 
but  as  Marco  did  not  write  easily  she  knew  she  must 
not  expect  it.  If  he  were  ill  or  wounded  he  would 
surely  send  her  word  or  get  someone  to  do  so  for 
him;  so  of  course  he  was  well.  She  must  be  patient 
and  some  day  news  would  reach  her,  or  better  still 
Marco  would  return  to  her,  never  to  leave  her  again. 

In  such  musings,  hopings,  joys,  and  apprehen- 
sions the  long  weary  days  had  passed  for  little  Nedda, 
while  she  grew  strong  again  from  her  confinement 
and  fell  into  the  routine  of  her  new  life. 

With  all  the  joy  of  the  baby  and  all  the  warmth 
and  consolation  it  brought  into  her  life  there  was, 
nevertheless,  one  ever-darkening  shadow  resting  on 
her  —  the  small  sum  of  money  on  deposit  in  the 
bank  was  steadily  shrinking.  There  was  just  one 
hundred  and  twenty-six  dollars  left  and  Marco  had 
been  gone  only  a  little  over  three  months.  When  the 
money  was  gone?     When  it  was  gone?     The  words 


28  THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 

kept  repeating  themselves  as  a  horrible  refrain, 
drumming  through  licr  head  with  tireless  insistence. 
There  seemed  no  answer,  nothing  to  be  done  or 
thought  of,  only  to  wait.  What  could  she  do  here, 
so  alone  in  this  strange  land  and  with  her  baby  need- 
ing so  much  of  lier  time,  so  much  of  her  care? 

She  lay  awake  nights,  and  the  danger  seemed  to 
grow  blacker  and  blacker,  nearer  and  nearer.  She 
tried  to  shut  it  out,  to  think  only  of  the  present, 
and  to  feel  sure  that  Marco  would  return  before  the 
money  was  all  spent;  but  the  terrible  thoughts  and 
fears  would  come  back  to  her  and  seemed  crowding 
in  on  her  ever  closer  and  closer  and  more  menacingly. 
She  seemed  to  be  suffocating,  and  so  great  was  her 
sense  of  danger  and  apprehension  during  those  dark 
night  hours  that  she  thought  she  must  cry  out  or 
take  up  her  baby  and  run  away  to  some  refuge  where 
she  could  find  help.  She  realized,  however,  that  there 
was  no  help,  that  she  was  alone  among  strangers, 
and  that  she  must  face  the  danger  alone  and  wait 
and  hope  and  try  to  be  brave. 

It  was  now  autumn  and  growing  cold.  There  was 
more  coal  to  be  bought  to  keep  the  two  little  rooms 
warm  for  baby,  and  coal  was  becoming  very,  very 
dear.  Food  also  was  growing  much  higher,  but  when 
she  tried  to  eat  only  a  little  she  began  to  lose  weight 
and  color.  Mrs.  Gallo,  meeting  her  one  day,  noticed 
her  pale  appearance,  and  suspecting  the  cause  with 
the  sure  intuition  of  the  poor,  told  her  that  she  must 
have  plenty  of  good  food  if  she  wished  to  continue 
to  nurse  the  child.  The  woman  spoke  the  truth  and 
Nedda  knew  it,  for  worry  and  so  little  to  eat  were  be- 
ginning to  tell  on  her  and  she  was  finding  it  more  diffi- 


THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA  29 

cult  to  give  the  baby  nourishment.  At  the  sugges- 
tion of  not  being  able  to  continue  so  doing  an  icy 
hand  seemed  to  grasp  Nedda's  heart  and  she  began 
to  force  her  appetite,  despite  her  worry  and  pre- 
occupation and  the  ever-recurring  thought  that 
everything  she  ate  brought  them  appreciably  nearer 
to  want  and  perhaps  to  starvation. 

Finally  she  came  to  a  resolution  which  seemed  to 
promise  some  respite.  She  would  change  her  two 
rooms  for  a  single  room  on  the  inner  court  of  the 
building  and  thus  save  money  for  coal.  In  her  youth 
and  inexperience  she  did  not  understand  that  a  domi- 
cile without  any  direct  sunlight  would  be  the  very 
worst  thing  for  her  baby.  He  seemed  so  strong  and 
healthy  that  she  could  not  imagine  him  as  ill.  Her 
present  two  tiny  rooms,  facing  on  the  outer  and 
larger  court  of  the  building,  from  which  considerable 
sunshine  entered  for  some  three  or  four  hours  of  the 
day,  were  at  the  rate  of  fourteen  dollars  a  month; 
whereas  a  single  room,  with  an  alcove  for  the  bed, 
facing  on  the  narrow  inner  court  and  wholly  with- 
out sunshine,  was  only  about  nine  dollars  a  month: 
a  saving  of  five  dollars  a  month.  There  was  also 
the  cost  of  the  gas  as  measured  by  the  metre,  but 
of  that  she  had  been  so  sparing  that  it  was  but  a 
very  trifling  item.  In  addition  there  was  finally  the 
rental  of  the  few  pieces  of  furniture  in  the  place  — 
the  chairs,  table,  bed,  bedding,  stove,  and  kitchen 
utensils.  These  several  items  —  room  rent,  gas,  and 
the  rent  of  the  furniture  —  were  collected  weekly,  for 
in  the  North  End,  among  the  immigrant  population, 
Shylock,  whether  Jew  or  Gentile,  is  at  every  turn  and 
exploits  necessity  with  the  relentlessness  of  the  hawk. 


IV 

THE  tenement  into  which  Ncdda  moved  was  indeed 
a  wretched  hole,  dark,  musty,  and  cheerless.  It 
had  been  left  dirty  also  by  the  last  tenant,  though 
Nedda  soon  had  it  clean.  It  consisted  of  a  room 
about  fourteen  feet  square  with  an  alcove  for  a  bed, 
the  main  room  looking  through  two  small  windows, 
placed  together  on  one  side,  into  a  narrow  court,  or 
more  properly  a  sort  of  well,  a  few  yards  square. 
As  Nedda's  lodging  was  on  the  second  story  of  a  five- 
story  building,  one  can  imagine  how  much  light 
percolated  down  this  narrow,  interior  well  from 
above  to  the  room  which  she  occupied.  The  place 
was  in  a  semi-light  or  twilight  dunng  the  greater 
part  of  the  day  and  by  three  o'clock  was  practicallj' 
in  darkness. 

She  made  the  best  of  such  quarters,  however,  try- 
ing to  keep  a  brave  heart  in  the  thought  that  now  her 
money  would  last  somewhat  longer.  She  made  the 
bed  and  tucked  the  baby  up  comfortably,  and  as 
soon  as  the  stove  was  set  up  she  had  a  fire  going 
and  occupied  herself  with  her  small  duties. 

Mrs.  Gallo  came  to  see  her,  and  though  the  good 
woman  deplored  the  discomfort  and  cheerlessness 
of  Nedda's  new  lodging,  she  recognized  the  need 
of  the  change  from  what  Nedda  told  her;  for  she 
too  was  a  poor  woman,  dependent,  in  fact,  upon 
her  married  daughter  for  shelter,  and  poverty  but 
too  well  understands  the  sacrifices  of  poverty. 


THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA  31 

The  baby's  godmother  was  the  more  sorry  at 
Nedda's  new  situation  because  she  had  come  to  tell 
her  that  she  was  about  to  move  away  from  Boston. 
The  warm-hearted  woman  dreaded  leaving  *'  her  dear 
little  one,"  as  she  called  Nedda,  so  alone  and  unbe- 
friended,  and  she  shrank  still  more  from  the  necessity 
of  telling  her  that  she  was  so  soon  going  away.  Her 
son-in-law  had  found  other  work,  which  he  preferred, 
in  Worcester,  and  so  the  family  were  to  go  there  at 
the  end  of  the  week. 

Nedda's  grief  at  the  news  was  pitiful.  Mrs.  Gallo 
was  indeed  her  only  friend  and  confidante  in  this 
strange  land,  and  the  good  woman  had  been  so  pro- 
tecting and  helpful  in  all  the  sad  months  since  Marco 
went,  especially  when  the  baby  came,  that  Nedda  had 
begun  to  regard  her  almost  as  a  parent.  She  wept 
bitterly  at  first,  but  when  Mrs.  Gallo,  who  could 
not  bear  to  see  such  distress,  told  her  that,  if 
she  cried  herself  sick,  the  baby  would  suffer,  the 
poor  little  mother  controlled  herself  by  a  great 
effort  and  set  herself  to  face  this  new  sorrow  as  she 
had  met  all  the  suffering  of  the  past  months. 

The  kind  old  creature  found  time  during  the  three 
days  before  her  departure  to  run  in  often  to  see 
Nedda  and  also  gave  her  many  little  things  for  her- 
self and  the  baby  from  her  own  scanty  possessions, 
combined  with  much  good  advice  and  motherly  affec- 
tion, so  that  the  hours  before  parting  were  easier  for 
Nedda. 

Though  she  had  promised  Mrs,  Gallo  to  be  brave 
and  not  to  weep  when  she  had  gone,  but  to  keep  busy 
and  hopeful  for  the  baby's  sake,  yet  when  the  good 
soul  had  departed  and  Nedda  faced  the  fact  that  she 


82  THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 

was  now  alone,  without  anyone  near  tier  to  whom 
she  could  go  for  aid  or  sympathy,  she  threw  herself 
on  her  bed  in  the  lonely  room  in  a  flood  of  tears  such 
as  she  had  not  given  way  to  since  the  day  Marco 
left  her. 

How  long  she  lay  there  weeping  and  trembling 
and  trying  to  pray  the  good  Madonna  for  help  and 
strength  she  never  knew,  but  she  was  suddenly  re- 
called to  outer  things  by  a  baby's  wail.  It  was  her 
darling  appealing  to  her ;  he  was  hungry  and  perhaps 
cold,  and  his  little  quavering  cry  struck  to  her  heart 
at  once  and  steeled  her  with  a  new  resolve.  He 
needed  her,  her  baby,  and  she  must  be  resolute  because 
of  him.  She  got  up  at  once,  went  to  him,  warmed  him, 
and  nursed  him,  and  when  he  had  fallen  asleep  again, 
satisfied  and  comfortable,  Nedda  washed  her  face, 
combed  her  hair,  and  made  up  her  mind  to  be  coura- 
geous and  calm  again,  as  she  had  tried  to  be  before. 
Marco,  who  was  fighting  so  bravely  far,  far  away, 
would  expect  her  to  be  brave  too,  and  she  realized 
that  she  must  be  tranquil  for  her  baby's  sake. 
Marco  must  not  find  the  baby  ill  when  he  returned. 
She  must  show  him  how  strong  and  patient  she,  a 
soldier's  wife,  had  been  through  all  these  long 
months  of  separation.  So  she  went  about  her  duties, 
only  wishing  that  she  had  more  things  to  do  to  oc- 
cupy her  mind  and  keep  the  sad  thoughts  away. 

To-day  was  the  day  to  go  to  the  bank.  How  she 
dreaded  it,  for  with  coal  and  provisions  growing 
almost  daily  higher,  it  was  hard  to  spend  little,  even 
with  the  reduced  rent,  and  each  time  she  drew  more 
money  away  from  her  slender  store  she  felt  her  heart 
sink  with  renewed  foreboding.     There  was  not  quite 


THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA  38 

sixty  dollars  left  in  the  bank  and  it  was  now  Novem- 
ber, with  winter  just  coming  on,  and  people  said 
that  the  war  would  surely  last  all  winter.  Try  as 
she  might  she  could  not  live  at  less  than  thirty-two 
or  thirty-three  dollars  a  month,  and  in  two  months 
at  the  longest  she  knew  she  would  be  destitute. 

She  made  up  her  mind  to  write  to  Marco  in  the 
care  of  his  regiment  and  tell  him  everything.  She 
was  most  reluctant  to  worry  him,  as  she  was  sure  he 
must  be  very  much  occupied  and  perhaps  even  ill 
or  wounded.  But  she  felt  that  he  was  still  her 
natural  protector,  though  the  ocean  divided  them, 
and  probably  he  could  explain  to  the  government, 
being  in  Italy,  and  get  help  for  her  and  the  baby. 

Some  time  previously,  not  long  after  the  birth  of 
her  baby,  she  had  gone  to  the  consul's  office,  as 
Marco  had  told  her  to  do,  and  applied  for  the 
monthly  relief  allowance  to  the  family  of  a  soldier 
at  the  front.  After  consulting  the  records  it  was 
explained  to  her,  however,  that  inasmuch  as  it  ap- 
peared that  Marco  had  left  Italy  before  he  had 
reached  the  age  for  his  military  service,  she  was  not 
entitled  to  any  such  aid,  because  his  present  war 
service  counted  only  for  his  regular  military  service. 
Small  as  is  the  amount  allowed  monthly  to  those 
reservists'  families  who  are  recipients  of  the  same 
from  the  Italian  government,  which  in  this  supreme 
struggle  has  very  many  calls  on  its  resources,  and 
wholly  inadequate  as  this  sum  is  for  their  support 
here  in  America,  yet  it  would  have  been  of  much 
help  to  Nedda,  and  to  find  that  she  was  not  to  re- 
ceive it  was  a  great  disappointment. 

While  they  were  making  the  matter  plain  to  her 


84  THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 

she  had  seen  with  unsparing  clearness  of  vision  that 
all  that  now  stood  between  her  and  starvation  was 
the  money  still  remaining  in  the  bank,  though  fast 
melting  away.  As  soon  as  it  was  exhausted,  which 
would  be  before  long,  she  would  be  forced  into  the 
street  with  her  baby  and  obliged  to  beg  for  bread, 
like  the  very  poor  sometimes  did  in  Italy ;  but  even 
that  life  she  knew  would  not  be  possible  in  the  cold 
New  England  winter.  When  she  had  tried  to  pic- 
ture her  condition  to  those  at  the  consul's  office,  they 
had  told  her  very  kindly  and  patiently  that  there 
were  a  great  many  other  Italian  women  in  Boston 
in  exactly  the  same  plight  and  that  they  were 
unfortunately  not  in  a  position  to  give  such  relief 
unless  the  government  allowed  it.  They  had  also 
advised  her  to  try  immediately  to  find  work.  But 
how  could  she  do  so  in  this  strange  city,  where 
she  knew  only  a  few  words  of  the  language  and  with 
her  baby  so  young  and  still  nursing  and  unable  to 
be  left  alone  for  long  at  a  time.'*  She  felt  it  was  im- 
possible, and  she  had  come  away  from  the  consulate 
with  a  bitter  feeling  of  desperation  and  hopelessness 
and  her  eyes  full  of  angry  tears. 

So  she  wrote  to  Marco,  and  though  she  tried  to 
make  her  story  brave  and  confident  and  to  keep  the 
tears  from  falling  on  the  page,  it  was  a  poor,  blotted, 
and  hardly  legible  little  scrawl  when  she  had  done. 
She  knew  Marco  could  write  but  very  poorly  and 
even  signed  his  name  with  difficultj\  She  hardly 
hoped  for  an  answer  from  him ;  indeed,  he  had  not 
yet  replied  to  her  news  announcing  the  birth  of 
their  baby.  Still  she  trusted  that,  when  he  received 
word   from  her  of  her  situation,  he  would   tell  his 


THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA  35 

superiors  about  it  and  persuade  "  la  patria "  to 
send  her  some  assistance.  It  seemed  to  her  that 
thej  could  not  let  her  starve  with  her  baby,  when 
her  Marco  had  been  among  the  first  to  ^return  at 
the  call  of  Italy  and  was  even  now  fighting  in  her 
defence. 

As  soon  as  she  had  dispatched  the  letter  she  was 
relieved,  but  before  long  the  old  fears  and  forebod- 
ings returned  and  she  found  it  difficult  to  keep  from 
worrying  or  to  sleep  at  night.  What  if  the  letter 
never  reached  Marco.?  What  if  he  were  unable  to 
persuade  them  to  aid  her.?  The  consul  had  said 
that  the  country  was  giving  all  the  help  it  could 
possibly  afford  and  that  there  were  very  many 
others  like  her  to  be  assisted.  What  if  Marco  were 
ill,  too  ill  to  read  what  she  had  written.?  What 
if  —  if  he  were  dead.?  One  poor  woman  in  a  near-by 
street  had  only  just  been  notified  of  the  death  of  her 
husband  at  the  front,  many  weeks  after  it  had 
occurred. 

One  after  another  these  thoughts  crowded  in  on 
her  until  she  lived  in  a  misery  of  dread  and  uncer- 
tainty. She  strove  to  shut  out  such  fears,  to  con- 
vince herself  that  all  would  be  well,  but  continually 
they  returned  to  her,  these  terrible  apprehensions, 
until  she  felt  that  her  courage  was  breaking  and 
that  she  was  becoming  completely  unnerved. 

In  her  desperation  she  finally  brought  herself  to 
write  to  her  relatives  in  the  little  mountain  village 
above  Palermo,  in  the  hope  that  they  might  send  her 
something.  Her  parents  were  dead  and  she  addressed 
the  missive  to  her  old  grandmother,  who  had  always 
been  so  good  and  so  kind  that,  next  to  Maroo,  she 


86  THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 

seemed  the  best  person  Nedda  had  ever  known. 
Grandmother  could  not  read,  but  Nedda  knew  that 
the  priest  would  read  it  all  aloud  to  tlicin. 

She  was  very  loath  to  appeal  to  them,  for  she 
knew  how  poor  they  were  and  she  feared  that,  in 
this  time  of  war,  they  must  be  even  more  in  need ; 
but  when  she  looked  at  her  baby  and  thought  of  the 
fate  which  hung  over  them  both,  she  hesitated  no 
longer.  There  in  Sicily,  where  all  things  grew  and 
flourished  in  the  sunshine,  they  would  not  starve, 
however  poor  they  might  be;  while  here  in  winter 
time  in  this  strange  cold  land,  without  money  and 
without  work,  she  and  her  baby  were  faced  with 
nothing  less  than  starvation. 

It  was  an  ill-expressed,  ill-written,  little  letter 
when  she  had  finished  it,  even  less  presentable  than 
that  to  Marco,  though  she  had  tried  her  best  and 
rewritten  it  several  times;  but  she  was  so  shaken 
and  wretched  and  preoccupied  by  anxiety  and  hesita- 
tion that  she  could  not  seem  to  think  what  to  say 
or  how  to  make  them  understand  her  circumstances. 
Blots  would  come  on  the  paper  and  tears  too,  strive 
as  she  would  to  be  calm,  and  the  more  she  tried  to 
write  well  and  clearly,  the  harder  it  seemed.  At  last 
it  was  done,  however,  and  posted,  and  for  a  little 
while  she  again  felt  more  cheerful,  though  the  old 
fears  still  haunted  her  with  the  persistence  of  bad 
dreams. 

She  was  becoming  pale  and  thin,  and  when  she 
caught  sight  of  herself  in  the  glass,  all  she  could 
see  were  great,  black,  staring  eyes,  which  seemed 
to  have  grown  very,  very  large,  looking  at  her  from 
a  drawn,  pinched  little  face  which  she  hardly  recog- 


THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA  37 

nized  as  her  own.  Her  condition,  too,  was  beginning 
to  react  on  the  child,  which  had  grown  white  and  thin 
also  and  was  restless  and  troublesome.  Once  or  twice, 
after  she  had  been  crying  and  had  then  nursed  the 
baby,  it  vomited,  and  she  realized  that  her  own  agita- 
tion was  the  cause  of  its  indigestion.  She  tried  to  get 
it  to  take  cow's  milk,  but  it  refused,  after  having  been 
nearly  four  months  at  the  breast,  and  when  she 
finally  persuaded  it  to  do  so,  it  was  more  distressed 
than  ever  and  vomited  again. 

She  made  up  her  mind  that  she  must  be  self-con- 
trolled and  must  wholly  banish  all  unhappy  thoughts 
and  fears,  if  her  baby  were  to  be  saved,  and  by  such 
a  continuous  effort  of  will  as  she  had  never  exerted 
before  in  her  life  she  forced  herself  for  the  time 
being  to  dismiss  from  her  mind  all  consideration  of 
the  future.  She  felt  as  if  she  were  held  in  a  vise,  as 
though  she  were  being  slowly  crushed  by  some  re- 
lentless power,  but  she  compelled  herself  to  continue 
calm  and  self-repressed.  The  strain,  however,  was 
telling  on  her,  even  more  seriously  than  when  she 
had  been  able  to  relieve  her  grief  in  tears,  and  the 
child  continued  ailing  and  restless. 


NEDDA  saw  that  she  must  get  work  before  it  was 
too  late  and  they  were  penniless,  so  she  went 
again  to  the  consul's  office  to  ask  where  she  could 
apply  for  it;  if  possible  something  that  she  could 
take  home  with  her  to  do.  They  gave  her  the  ad- 
dresses of  several  employment  agencies  in  the  city. 
She  returned  home  and  dressed  herself  as  neatly  as 
she  could  and,  discarding  her  head  shawl,  wearing  for 
the  occasion  a  fur  cap  of  Marco's,  to  look  more 
American,  found  her  way  to  the  first  place  on  the  list. 

She  entered  a  dingy  room  full  of  waiting  women 
who  seemed  to  eye  her  so  ferociously  from  every 
comer  that  she  wanted  to  flee,  but  she  remembered 
her  baby  and  went  on  into  a  second  room  or 
office,  where  a  thin,  sharp-featured  woman  was 
seated  at  a  desk.  She  addressed  this  person  as  well 
as  she  could  in  her  broken  English,  but  before  she 
had  uttered  a  dozen  words  she  was  interrupted  by  a 
rasping  voice,  saying,  "  You  must  learn  to  speak 
English  first;  we  do  not  place  foreigners  who  do 
not  speak  English."  The  tone  was  so  decided  that 
she  had  not  the  courage  to  reply,  and  with  a  mur- 
mured "  Grazie  "  (Thank  you)  she  retreated,  fol- 
lowed by  a  dozen  pairs  of  relentless  eyes  as  she 
passed  through  the  outer  room  and  onto  the  street. 

How  she  longed  to  fly  back  to  her  poor  little  room 
and  hide  her  shame  and  disappointm-ent  in  the  pil- 


THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA  39 

lows  of  her  bed,  but  the  thought  of  her  baby  nerved 
her  with  renewed  detennination,  and  she  looked  for 
the  next  address  which  the  consul's  clerk  had  given 
her.  It  was  a  long  way  off  in  a  different  part  of  the 
town,  but  the  walk  did  her  good  and  seemed  to  soothe 
her  and  give  her  more  self-control. 

On  entering  the  agency  she  found  what  seemed 
to  her  a  less  hostile  atmosphere,  and  the  person  in 
charge  was  more  considerate  in  her  manner.  She 
asked  Nedda's  age  and  nationality,  whether  she  was 
married  or  single,  and  listened  patiently  while  Nedda 
found  words  to  convey  brokenly  that  she  would  like 
to  find  work  such  as  sewing  which  she  could  do  at 
home.  When  Nedda  had  managed  to  make  herself 
understood,  the  woman  in  charge  replied  that,  al- 
though she  did  not  as  a  rule  place  Italians,  she 
would  get  such  work  for  Nedda,  if  anyone  applied 
to  have  it  so  done,  and  took  her  name  and  address. 
She  did  not,  however,  encourage  the  little  applicant 
very  much  and  told  her  that  she  would  notify  her 
if  she  had  anything  for  her. 

Nedda  left  the  office  with  despair  in  her  heart 
and  again  consulted  her  list.  There  was  but  one 
name  remaining  thereon,  an  address  on  Tremont 
Street.  She  set  out  for  the  same  at  once,  without 
giving  herself  time  to  think  or  to  lose  courage. 

When  she  reached  the  agency  she  found  it  full  of 
persons  looking  for  employment,  and  after  she  had 
made  her  wants  known  she  was  told  that  they  did 
not  consider  girls  wishing  to  take  sewing  home,  but 
that,  if  she  wanted  to  "  go  out  "  as  "  help,"  she  could 
wait  in  the  outer  room  and  perhaps  they  might  have 
something  for  her  later.     The  thought  of  working 


40  THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 

out  as  a  domestic  was  strange  and  wholly  repugnant 
to  Ncdda  —  she  a  married  woman !  What  would 
Marco  say?  In  the  hope,  however,  that  she  might 
find  some  such  service  for  part  only  of  each  day, 
which  would  permit  her  to  go  back  to  her  baby  when 
necessary,  she  sat  down  among  a  number  of  other 
women  of  the  domestic  class,  none  of  them  Italians, 
feeling  more  lonely  and  ill  at  ease  than  at  any  time 
in  her  life.  She  wanted  more  than  ever  before  to 
flee  away  and  seek  some  deserted  place  where  she 
could  find  relief  in  tears,  but  she  realized  that  she 
must  remain  there  and  keep  calm,  for  was  not  this 
perhaps  her  last  chance  to  get  anything  to  do? 

After  a  long  wait  she  was  called  in  to  interview  a 
rather  coarse  woman  who  wanted  a  maid  of  all  work 
for  a  lodging  house,  but  as  soon  as  Nedda  began  to 
reply  to  questions  in  her  halting  English  she  was 
dismissed  as  impossible.  After  another  long  interval 
she  was  again  called  in  to  confront  a  more  ladylike 
person,  who  immediately  demanded  her  references, 
and  when  it  appeared  that  Nedda  had  none,  the 
prospective  employer  drew  back  in  horrified  surprise 
and  Nedda  was  at  once  informed  by  the  woman  at 
the  desk  that  without  references  they  could  not 
undertake  to  place  her.  She  produced  the  piece  of 
consulate  letter  paper  on  which  the  consul's  assist- 
ant had  written  the  names  of  the  various  employ- 
ment agencies,  but  that  seemed  to  have  no  effect  on 
her  interlocutors,  and  she  was  summarily  turned 
away. 

She  stumbled  down  the  dark  stairs  into  the  street 
with  anger  and  mutiny  in  her  heart  at  the  bloodless 
injustice  of  a   fate  which  had  placed  her  and  her 


THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA  41 

innocent  baby  in  this  horrible  position  from  which 
there  seemed  no  escape.  They  must  starve  then, 
here  in  this  cold,  strange,  friendless  place,  because 
her  Marco  had  gone  back  at  the  call  of  duty  to  fight 
for  his  country.  Where  was  the  good  Madonna 
that  she  allowed  such  things?  Surely  she  must  know 
all  of  Nedda's  trouble  or  else  prayers  were  of  no 
avail.  Terrible  thoughts  crossed  Nedda's  mind, 
thoughts  that  made  her  shudder  and  feel  guilty, 
even  as  they  came  to  her.  Was  there  a  Madonna 
who  protected  and  loved  poor  young  mothers  like 
Nedda,  or  was  it  all  a  delusion  and  was  the  Madonna 
so  very  far  away  that  she  could  not  hear,  could  not 
know,  could  not  see  those  who  so  needed  her? 

She  walked  along  the  street  aimlessly,  hardly 
thinking  of  her  direction,  intent  on  the  conflict  that 
was  raging  within  her.  It  was  dusk  and  the  street 
lamps  and  shop  windows  were  lighting  up,  but 
Nedda  kept  on,  regardless  of  her  surroundings. 
She  collected  herself  enough  to  know  that  she  was 
going  towards  her  home,  and  that  was  all. 

Suddenly  she  felt  a  hand  upon  her  arm  and  a 
voice  which  seemed  very  near  and  yet  very  far  off 
said:  "Where  are  you  going,  little  girl?  Don't 
you  want  to  come  and  have  a  drink  with  me?  "  She 
drew  away  as  though  she  had  been  stung,  for  she 
had  lived  long  enough  in  a  large  city  to  know  the 
various  phases  of  street  life,  and  she  understood 
very  well  what  such  a  salutation  and  invitation 
meant.  But  with  the  natural  revulsion  of  a  thor- 
oughly innocent  and  good  woman,  she  instinctively 
stepped  back  and  hastened  her  pace.  The  speaker, 
however,  continued  by  her  side,  and  after  a  moment 


42  THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 

he  began  again.  "  You  don*t  look  over-flush  with 
money,  little  girl,  and  if  you  '11  go  with  me  for  the 
evening  and  be  good  to  me,  there  's  ten  dollars  in  it 
for  you." 

Nedda's  heart  stood  still.  Ten  dollars,  enough 
to  keep  her  baby  and  herself  for  nearly  a  fortnight, 
to  be  made  in  a  few  hours:  and  she  was  almost 
destitute;  in  a  month  they  would  have  nothing. 
How  easy  it  would  be  to  support  them  both  in  such 
a  way ;  only  once  in  every  few  days  would  the  sacri- 
fice be  necessary.  She  shuddered  at  the  horror  of  it. 
But  it  meant  safety,  safety  for  her  baby,  a  sunny 
room  to  live  in,  and  peace  of  mind,  and  the  baby 
would  grow  rosy  and  fat  again.  As  for  herself, 
what  did  it  matter,  if  she  could  save  her  child?  She 
heard  the  voice  still  persuading  her,  but  she  was 
not  listening  to  what  it  said ;  she  was  thinking,  try- 
ing to  think  it  all  out,  and  in  desperate  haste,  for 
herself. 

Then  in  a  flash  she  thought  of  Marco,  her  Marco, 
her  husband,  so  strong  and  good  and  true,  and  at 
the  remembrance  of  him  and  of  their  love  for  each 
other  her  soul  revolted  from  the  creature  at  her 
side,  and  she  flung  off  the  hand  that  rested  on  her 
arm  with  an  exclamation  of  indignation  and  hurried 
on  through  the  crowded  street.  In  a  moment  she 
understood  intuitively  that  she  was  alone,  the 
man  had  ceased  to  accompany  her,  and  she  felt  a 
sense  of  relief,  as  though  she  had  escaped  from 
something  poisonous  and  pestilential. 


VI 

WHEN  Nedda  reached  home,  faint  and  quiver- 
ing from  the  emotions  of  the  past  few  hours, 
her  attention,  as  she  climbed  the  dark  stairs,  was  ar- 
rested by  a  baby's  cry.  She  recognized  it  at  once 
with  a  mother's  intuition;  it  was  her  little  one  cry- 
ing. She  hastened  into  the  room  and  took  him  in 
her  arms ;  his  eyes  were  very  bright  and  he  looked 
flushed  and  restless.  She  placed  him  at  her  breast, 
but  he  refused  nourishment,  which  surprised  her,  as 
he  had  been  a  number  of  hours  alone,  longer  than 
she  had  ever  left  him  before.  She  tried  to  quiet  him, 
but  could  not;  he  tossed  uneasily  in  her  arms,  his 
cries  gradually  quavering  off  into  a  weak,  convulsive 
sort  of  sob,  which  gripped  at  her  heart  strings  and 
tortured  her  with  apprehension.  For  with  fear  and 
misgiving  she  realized  the  truth.  Her  baby  was  ill 
and  suffering,  perhaps  very  ill.  She  knew  she  must 
find  help,  must  go  for  the  doctor.  She  thanked  the 
dear  Madonna  that  the  doctor  was  so  kind  and  good, 
for  he  would  help  her ;  she  knew  that.  Having  put 
the  baby  back  on  the  bed,  she  started  immediately, 
but  its  cries,  now  louder,  now  subdued  into  a  low, 
plaintive  wail,  tortured  her  as  she  descended  the 
stairs,  and  seemed  pulling  her  back,  until  she  fairly 
ran  out  to  the  street  in  her  agitation. 

She  hardly  knew  how  she  reached  the  well-remem- 
bered office,  but  when  she  found  herself  there  it  was 


44  THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 

closed.  The  proprietor  of  a  small  tobacco  shop  on 
the  ground  floor  told  her  that  it  was  after  the  doc- 
tor's office  hours  and  he  had  gone  home ;  in  fact  the 
tobacconist  had  not  seen  him  pass  for  several  days 
and  thought  he  might  be  ill.  Where  was  his  home.' 
The  man  did  not  remember  exactly,  but  after  con- 
sulting the  directory  he  gave  her  the  address.  It 
was  some  distance  away ;  too  far  to  walk,  the  man 
suggested.  She  answered  that  she  could  walk,  and 
without  a  moment's  delay  was  out  of  the  door  and 
on  her  way. 

It  was  a  long  stretch  to  Charlestown,  over  bridges 
and  car  tracks,  but  Nedda  counted  neither  eflFort  nor 
distance  and  sped  on  almost  at  a  run  over  the  dark, 
uneven  pavements.  She  had  but  one  thought,  one 
hope,  one  prayer  —  to  save  her  baby. 

After  many  mistakes  and  inquiries,  assisted  luckily 
by  the  doctor's  address  written  on  a  piece  of  paper 
by  the  tobacconist,  she  found  his  home,  a  modest 
lodging  in  a  tenement  of  the  better  class.  She  rang 
the  bell,  and  even  knocked  at  the  door  in  her  im- 
patience, which  she  could  no  longer  restrain.  After 
what  seemed  an  interminable  interval  the  door  was 
opened  by  an  elderly  woman  in  a  dressing  gown,  who 
seemed  to  divine  Nedda's  quest  before  she  spoke  and 
sadly  informed  her  that  the  doctor  was  very  ill,  had 
been  so  for  nearly  a  week,  and  could  see  no  patients. 

Nedda  gripped  at  the  door  casing  and  felt  as 
though  she  would  fall.  The  good  woman,  who  un- 
derstood her  visitor's  distress,  went  to  a  desk  in  the 
adjoining  room  and  wrote  an  address  on  a  piece  of 
paper,  which  she  gave  to  Nedda.  It  was  the  name 
of  another  doctor.     "  Go  to  him,"  she  told  the  pale 


THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA  45 

and  agitated  girl,  "  he  will  assist  you."  Nedda 
thanked  her  as  best  she  could  and  hastened  away. 

The  other  practitioner  lived  back  in  the  city  proper 
and  it  was  again  a  long  walk.  Nedda  stumbled  sev- 
eral times,  for  her  strength  was  beginning  to  fail. 
She  had  not  eaten  since  morning  and  her  day  had 
been  one  of  constant  strain  and  suspense. 

When  she  reached  the  physician's  house  he  was 
out  on  a  case,  and  Nedda  waited  in  his  office  more 
than  an  hour  before  he  arrived.  She  explained  about 
her  baby  as  well  as  she  was  able,  for  the  doctor  was 
not  an  Italian.  He  at  once  began  to  make  difficulties 
about  going  out  again  so  late;  it  was  nearly  nine 
o'clock  and,  he  told  her,  he  had  had  nothing  to  eat 
since  luncheon.  Could  not  the  child  wait  until  the 
morning.''    Was  it  so  very  ill.''    But  Nedda  insisted. 

From  her  description  he  said  he  judged  it  was 
only  a  cold  the  baby  was  suffering  from,  perhaps  a 
little  indigestion.  He  would  give  her  some  medicine 
for  the  child,  which  would  lower  the  fever,  if  any, 
and  induce  sleep ;  and  he  would  be  there  in  the  morn- 
ing. Nedda,  however,  still  insisted  that  he  should 
come  at  once. 

In  order  to  discourage  her  still  further  he  added 
that  his  fee  was  never  less  than  three  dollars  for  a 
visit  so  late  at  night  as  this ;  for  he  saw  her  excited 
state  and  believed  she  was  in  a  nervous  condition  and 
had  overestimated  the  seriousness  of  the  baby's  illness. 
Nedda  stood  aghast.  Three  dollars,  and  she  had  so 
little  money  now  between  her  and  starvation.  Then 
she  seemed  to  hear  again  the  feeble  wail  of  her  little 
one  as  she  had  fled  down  the  stairs,  and  she  clutched 
at  the  doctor's  sleeve  and  appealed  to  him  to  come. 


46  THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 

Her  tone  and  manner  convinced  him  that  she  would 
not  be  put  off,  and  putting  on  his  coat  and  hat  with 
due  deliberation  and  placing  a  few  medicines  in  his 
handbag,  he  followed  her  out  into  the  street.  So 
fast  was  her  pace  he  found  it  difficult  to  keep  up 
with  her.  He  made  several  attempts  to  stop  her  so 
that  they  might  board  a  car,  but  she  did  not  seem 
to  hear  him  or  notice  him,  so  intent  was  she  on  her 
rapid  passage  through  the  streets.  So,  muttering 
something  under  his  breath  not  over-complimentary 
to  "  these  excitable  Italians,"  he  followed  her  lead. 
From  the  doctor's  office  to  the  North  End  was  not 
a  great  distance  luckily,  and  in  a  quarter  of  an  hour 
they  were  at  Nedda's  lodging. 

The  baby  was  no  longer  crying  and  seemed  to 
sleep,  but  as  soon  as  the  doctor  took  it  up  it  began 
to  give  little  convulsive  cries  and  moans.  He  looked 
at  it  gravely,  and  Nedda,  who  was  intently  watching 
him,  felt  her  heart  sink  as  she  saw  the  lines  deepen 
on  his  face,  for  she  knew  that  her  fears  were  but  too 
well  justified  and  that  her  baby  was  really  ill. 

The  doctor  gave  the  tiny  sufferer  some  medicine 
and  then  stayed  to  watch  the  effect.  It  was  evident 
that  he  thought  the  case  critical.  After  about  thirty 
minutes  he  gave  the  child  another  dose  and  shortly 
afterwards  expressed  himself  as  satisfied.  The  little 
thing  was  now  perfectly  quiet  and  lay  breathing  easily 
and  its  face  was  less  flushed. 

"  Give  this  medicine  again  in  two  hours,  just  as 
you  have  seen  me  give  it,"  he  explained  to  Xedda, 
"  and  keep  the  room  warm.  Don't  let  your  baby  get 
chilled  again  by  allowing  the  temperature  to  fall  in 
this  room.     You  must  not  try  to  save  coal  or  you 


THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA  47 

will  lose  jour  child,"  he  said,  stirring  the  grate  of 
the  stove  and  throwing  on  some  more  coal.  "  If  the 
child  grows  worse  again,  send  for  me.  Here  is  my 
telephone  number."  He  gave  her  his  car4.  "  Any 
apothecary  will  telephone  to  me  for  you.  I  do  not 
think  he  will  be  worse  again,"  he  continued,  "  and  I 
will  come  back  in  the  morning." 

He  picked  up  his  hat  and  bag  and  started  to  leave, 
but  Nedda  felt  that  she  must  know  more  and  could 
not  let  him  go  without  his  telling  her  the  whole  truth. 
She  went  to  him  and  put  her  hand  on  his  sleeve, 
looking  up  into  his  face  with  mute  question  in  her 
eyes,  for  words  failed  her. 

"  Yes,"  he  answered,  understanding  her,  "  your 
baby  is  ill,  quite  ill,  though  he  is  now  much  better 
than  when  I  came.  You  did  well  to  insist  on  my 
coming  at  once.  He  was  threatened,  I  think,  with 
pneumonia,  but  a  child  so  much  run  down  is  liable 
to  have  anything.  What  a  place  to  keep  an  infant 
in!  I  do  not  believe  you  have  a  ray  of  sun  here," 
he  continued,  looking  into  the  court.  "  If  you  wish 
your  child  to  live  and  be  well,  you  must  give  it  sun- 
shine.    A  plant  would  die  in  this  room  in  a  week." 

Nedda  made  no  reply.  She  knew  the  truth  of  every 
word  he  said,  had  known  it  for  weeks,  as  she  watched 
her  baby  failing  daily.  Yet  what  was  she  to  do.'' 
Even  this  place  might  not  be  hers  for  shelter  long. 
She  looked  down  at  the  child  with  breaking  heart, 
but  she  remained  silent,  for  she  felt  that  there  was 
no  time  now  to  tell  him  the  facts,  and  she  was  not 
sure  that  he  would  be  patient  to  hear  all  her  story. 
He  was  very  different  from  the  dear  old  doctor  who 
had  brought  her  baby  into  the  world.     He  put  on  his 


48  THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 

hat  with  a  self-satisfied  air,  as  though  he  had  done 
his  duty  in  the  circumstances,  and  witli  an  admoni- 
tion to  Nedda  not  to  forget  to  give  the  medicine 
when  directed,  he  departed. 

Nedda  was  alone,  alone  there  with  her  sick  baby 
and  with  poverty  and  failure  and  hopelessness.  She 
stood  motionless  while  she  heard  the  physician  de- 
scend the  stairs  and  close  the  street  door,  and  for  a 
long  time  afterward.  Then  she  raised  her  eyes  from 
the  child  as  though  to  seek  assistance  in  the  empty 
room.  Her  face  was  white  as  chalk  and  wore  a 
look  of  such  weariness  and  dejection  that  her  youth 
seemed  almost  to  have  passed  from  her  and  a  stranger 
might  at  first  sight  have  taken  her  for  a  much  older 
woman.  She  looked  down  again  at  the  child,  which 
was  now  asleep,  and  then  again  around  her,  as 
though  seeking  help,  until  her  glance  in  its  aimless 
passage  around  the  room  fell  on  the  small  print  of 
the  Madonna  above  the  bed.  Her  eyes  remained 
fixed  on  the  picture,  her  lips  quivered  with  emotion, 
and  falling  on  her  knees  beside  the  bed,  her  face 
pressed  close  to  the  baby,  she  poured  out  her  soul 
in  mute  appeal  to  the  Divine  Mother  above. 

How  long  she  prayed  she  did  not  know,  but  a 
movement  of  the  baby  aroused  her,  and  a  moment 
later  the  stroke  of  one  from  a  near-by  steeple  told 
her  that  it  was  time  to  give  the  medicine.  As  soon 
as  she  had  given  the  dose  and  replenished  the  fire 
with  unstinting  hand  from  her  small  supply  of  coal, 
she  sank  again  to  her  knees  by  the  bedside  in  silent 
supplication.  The  child  fell  asleep  immediately  and 
continued  to  sleep  on  peacefully,  and  her  instinct 
told  her  that  he  was  better  and  that  he  was  safe. 


THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA  49 

What  mattered  anything  now  so  long  as  she  had  her 
baby?  She  would  work  for  it,  suffer  for  it,  die  for 
it,  if  need  be,  but  it  should  be  saved. 

The  doctor  pronounced  the  child  out  of  danger 
when  he  returned  in  the  morning,  and  with  instruc- 
tions to  keep  the  room  warm  and  give  the  medicine 
at  stated  times  he  duly  collected  his  fee  of  five  dollars 
for  the  two  visits  and  left.  Before  he  went  he  advised 
Nedda  to  move  to  a  sunny  apartment  as  soon  as  she 
could,  and  when  she  informed  him  frankly  that  her 
husband  was  at  the  war  and  that  she  could  not  afford 
a  better  lodging,  he  told  her  that,  as  soon  as  the 
child  was  a  little  stronger  and  the  weather  more 
moderate,  she  must  wrap  it  up  warmly  and  take  it 
out  into  the  sunshine  for  two  hours  each  day.  "  It 
must  have  sunlight  somehow,"  he  said,  "  even  if  you 
cannot  get  it  here."  Though  his  advice  was  excellent 
and  he  seemed  really  interested  to  help  her,  he  made 
no  suggestion  of  lowering  his  fee  in  the  face  of  her 
acknowledged  poverty,  and  Nedda  was  too  proud  to 
ask  him  to  do  so. 

When  he  had  gone  she  found  that  his  fees  and  the 
cost  of  the  medicines  which  he  had  prescribed  had 
lessened  her  small  balance  by  nearly  seven  dollars, 
and  with  his  injunction  that  the  room  must  be  kept 
warm  in  the  future  she  knew  there  would  be  an  in- 
creased expenditure  for  fuel.  Now  that  the  breath- 
less suspense  of  the  child's  sudden  illness  was  over, 
Nedda  was  released  from  that  anguish,  only  to  be 
confronted  again  with  the  rapidly  advancing  spectre 
of  destitution. 

For  two  days  she  stayed  with  the  child  continually, 
and  then,  as  he  appeared  to  be  much  better,  she 


50  THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 

wrapped  him  up  warmly  and,  in  accordance  with  the 
doctor's  advice,  took  him  out  into  the  sunshine. 
They  had  been  out  for  some  time  and  she  was  return- 
ing home,  when  she  was  forced  to  stop  and  wait  on 
the  street  corner  by  a  long  funeral  procession  com- 
ing from  the  Italian  church  of  the  North  End  and 
now  on  its  way  to  the  cemetery.  Many  persons  be- 
sides Nedda  stood  watching  the  long  line  of  mourners, 
when  a  woman  who  lived  in  the  same  tenement  house 
with  Nedda  volunteered  the  information  that  it  was 
the  funeral  of  the  good  Dr.  Gadroni,  beloved  by  all 
the  Italian  poor  of  the  North  End,  which  was 
passing. 

The  news  was  a  severe  shock  to  Nedda  in  her 
weakened  and  nervous  condition,  for  in  the  death  of 
the  old  doctor  she  felt  that  she  had  lost  her  last 
friend  in  this  great,  lonely  city.  She  had  already 
decided  to  go  to  him  and  ask  his  advice  and  help  as 
soon  as  he  was  better,  and  now  he  too  had  been  taken 
away  from  her.  A  crushing  weight  of  despair  seemed 
to  fall  on  her,  and  when  she  had  reached  her  lodging 
and  made  her  baby  comfortable,  she  sank  again  on 
her  knees  beside  the  bed,  overcome  by  hopelessness 
and  the  sense  of  desolation.  She  found,  however, 
that  she  no  longer  had  the  strength  or  inclination 
to  pray,  so  completely  was  she  disheartened. 


vn 

THE  weekly  visit  to  the  bank  and  the  sight  of  the 
pitifully  small  sum  remaining  on  her  deposit 
book  stirred  her  from  her  apathy  with  a  sense  of  the 
necessity  of  finding  work  without  further  delay.  But 
where  should  she  turn  for  it?  She  knew  it  was  use- 
less to  go  back  to  the  employment  agencies,  for  she 
had  no  references  and  they  seemed  so  indifferent  to 
helping  her.  She  attempted  to  get  a  place  in  many 
shops  and  stores,  but  her  slight  knowledge  of  Eng- 
lish and  her  hesitation  and  timidity  were  her  undoing, 
whenever  she  presented  herself,  and  she  saw  that 
there  was  no  hope  of  her  being  employed  by  any 
American  firm. 

Finally  she  tried  the  small  Italian  shops  in  her 
own  quarter,  but  they  all  seemed  to  be  supplied  with 
help.  She  was  returning  home,  quite  exhausted  and 
hopeless,  when,  in  passing  a  fruit  stall  at  a  corner 
of  the  street  where  she  lived,  evidently  kept  by  one 
of  her  compatriots,  at  which  several  persons  were 
making  purchases,  she  heard  the  proprietress  say 
in  Italian  to  an  impatient  customer :  "  You  must 
wait  a  minute.  I  have  not  four  hands  to  serve  every- 
one at  once.  My  assistant  has  left  me."  Nedda 
stood  still.     Here  was  an  opportunity. 

She  waited  till  after  the  buyers  were  served  and 
then  offered  her  services  to  the  stall  keeper,  speaking 
in  Italian,  which  gave  her  courage.      It  happened 


62  THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 

that  this  person  was  also  a  Sicilian  and  they  dropped 
into  the  dialect  at  once.  Yes,  the  woman  needed  a 
helper,  but  she  could  not  afford  to  pay  more  than 
six  dollars  a  week,  and  the  hours  were  from  eight 
in  the  morning  till  eight  at  night  and  till  ten  on 
Saturday  nights,  with  half  an  hour  at  noon  for  din- 
ner. Nedda  explained  to  her  that  she  had  a  young 
baby  near  by,  which  must  be  nursed  at  intervals, 
and  that  if  she  might  also  go  home  for  half  an  hour 
at  four  o'clock  and  again  for  a  little  while  on  Satur- 
days at  seven  o'clock  to  see  to  her  baby,  she  could 
come.  The  other  agreed  and  it  was  understood  that 
Nedda  should  begin  on  the  morrow.  "  Wear  warm 
clothes,"  her  prospective  employer  called  out  to  her 
as  she  started  away.  "  It  is  cold  work  standing  out 
here  all  day  at  this  time  of  year,  and  I  don't  care 
to  be  bothered  with  any  more  assistants  falling  ill." 

All  the  way  home  a  voice  seemed  to  be  repeating 
to  Nedda  in  ringing  tones  :  "  Saved !  Saved !  "  Six 
dollars  a  week  —  more  than  twenty-four  dollars  a 
month  and  that  in  addition  to  the  money  still  re- 
maining in  the  bank.  Almost  sufficient  each  week  to 
pay  the  rent,  for  the  heat,  and  to  buy  food,  and  by 
drafts  of  only  a  dollar  or  two  a  week  at  the  bank 
there  would  be  enough  money  to  last  through  the 
cold  weather.  "  Saved !  Saved !  "  She  ran  up  the 
stairs  in  her  excitement  and,  taking  the  baby  up  from 
the  bed,  awoke  it  with  kisses  and  joyous  protesta- 
tions.    "  Saved !     Saved !  " 

In  her  happiness  she  took  the  little  print  of  the 
Madonna  down  from  the  wall  and  kissed  it  tenderly 
and  reverently,  for  had  not  the  Madonna  saved  them, 
found   her   this   work,   just    when    there   seemed    no 


THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA  58 

escape  from  the  terrible  net  which  enmeshed  her !  The 
reaction  from  her  previous  despair  was  so  great  that, 
for  a  time,  she  was  almost  beside  herself  and  kept 
talking  aloud  to  the  baby  and  herself  and  repeating 
the  great  good  fortune,  as  though  she  could  not  say 
it  too  often.  Soon  the  baby  began  to  cry  and  she 
realized  that  it  was  hungry,  and  this  brought  her 
back  to  the  sober  realities  of  life. 

She  took  the  child  in  her  arms  and  nursed  it,  and 
from  excitement  she  passed  into  a  mood  of  quiet 
thankfulness  and  a  peace  such  as  she  had  not  known 
for  months.  The  sombre  veil  of  uncertainty  had  in- 
deed lifted  and  she  already  looked  out  into  the  future 
with  confidence,  feeling  her  baby  and  herself  safe 
until  Marco  should  come  back.  How  she  would 
work,  how  useful  she  would  be  at  the  fruit  stall; 
she  would  make  herself  so  necessary  that  the  mistress 
would  never  want  her  to  go.  But  of  course  she  would 
be  obliged  to  leave  when  Marco  returned,  for  he 
would  wish  all  to  be  just  as  it  had  been  before  he 
left. 

It  was  unfortunate  that  she  must  be  so  much  away 
from  the  baby  and  that  she  could  no  longer  take 
him  out  of  doors,  as  the  doctor  had  ordered;  but 
then  the  weather  was  very  bad  at  present,  too  bad 
for  so  young  a  baby  to  be  out,  and  she  would  keep 
plenty  of  coal  in  the  stove  and  the  room  so  warm 
and  comfortable  that  he  would  always  be  very  cosey 
while  she  was  gone.  She  would  nurse  him  well  each 
morning  and  again  at  noon  and  once  more  at  four 
o'clock,  and  she  would  tie  him  safely  in  the  bed,  so 
that  he  could  not  fall  out,  just  as  she  had  seen  work- 
ing mothers  do  in  Italy.    Then  on  Sunday  she  would 


54  THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 

be  free  and  would  have  the  baby  all  to  herself  and 
be  able  to  mend  its  little  clothes  and  love  it  and 
make  up  to  it  for  having  been  absent  so  much  from 
it  all  the  week. 

The  next  morning  Nedda  was  up  at  an  early  hour. 
She  had  the  fire  going,  the  baby  washed  and  dressed 
and  nursed  and  comfortably  tucked  in  on  the  bed, 
her  own  toilet  made,  and  breakfast  eaten  by  half 
past  seven.  Before  eight  she  was  at  the  fruit  stall, 
eager  for  the  duties  that  lay  before  her. 

The  woman  who  kept  the  booth  was  married,  but 
had  a  drunken  husband,  who  took  no  interest  in  the 
trade,  which  was  wholly  in  the  hands  of  his  wife,  a 
large,  stout,  aggressive  creature,  who  knew  her  own 
mind  and  ruled  with  a  rod  of  iron.  She  drank,  too, 
at  times,  but  her  commercial  instinct  was  her  strong- 
est passion,  and  during  business  hours  she  was  never 
absent,  upless  at  the  wharves  or  market  purchasing 
fruit.  The  only  evidence  of  an  occasional  bout  of 
drinking  on  her  part  was  a  red  face  and  a  shrewish 
temper. 

It  fell  to  Nedda  to  do  all  the  hard  work  of  a  rough 
and  tumble  trade.  She  had  to  open  the  crates  of 
newly  arrived  fruit,  sort  and  arrange  the  various 
kinds  for  sale,  do  up  all  packages  of  the  same  which 
had  been  sold,  and  deliver  many  of  them  in  the  neigh- 
borhood, for  the  trade  was  largely  with  the  popula- 
tion of  the  North  End.  At  night  her  hands  were 
chapped  and  sore  and  were  often  cut  and  bleeding 
from  splinters  or  sharp  twine,  while  her  legs  and 
indeed  her  whole  body  ached  from  continual  stooping, 
lifting,  and  running  errands.  This,  in  addition  to 
nursing  her  baby,  doing  housework  at  home  early  in 


THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA  55 

the  morning  and  late  at  night,  and  with  hardly  any 
time  for  rest  or  to  eat  properly,  was  a  severe  strain 
on  her  vitality.  The  relief,  however,  from  the  ter- 
rible worry  and  uncertainty  in  which  she  had  been 
living  was  so  great  that  the  physical  strain  and  hard 
work  of  her  new  life  seemed  but  a  light  burden  in 
comparison. 

The  customers  were  mostly  her  compatriots,  and 
they  were  of  all  kinds,  from  little  street  Arabs  or 
newsboys,  each  buying  a  single  banana  at  a  time, 
to  restaurant  keepers  and  comfortably  well-off  fami- 
lies. There  were  a  good  many  Israelites  also,  the 
Jewish  quarter  adjoining  and  almost  interlocking 
with  the  Italian  quarter,  and  though  they  were  hard 
bargainers,  they  were  steady  buyers  and  always  with 
ready  money  and  therefore  desirable  patrons. 

The  fruit  dealer  herself  did  most  of  the  selling. 
For  this  Nedda  was  very  glad,  as  the  American 
money  always  troubled  her,  especially  when  she  had 
to  make  change  quickly.  Sometimes,  however,  she 
was  obliged  to  sell  also,  when  there  was  a  rush  of 
business  or  when  the  mistress  went  to  market.  It  was 
always  a  nervous  time  for  Nedda  when  she  acted  as 
saleswoman.  Her  employer  had  the  eye  of  a  lynx 
for  every  cent  due,  knew  the  stock  to  a  banana,  and 
would  have  detected  any  error  in  the  accounting  with- 
out fail,  Nedda  felt  sure.  What  would  happen  if 
the  stand  should  be  the  loser  by  a  mistake  of  hers, 
Nedda  dared  not  think. 

Most  of  the  purchasers  were  pleasant  to  deal  with 
and  many  of  them  were  Italians  of  the  neighborhood 
whom  Nedda  knew  by  sight.  There  was  one  man, 
however,    quite    young    and    smartly    dressed    and 


66  THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 

apparently  well  off,  who  often  bought  fruit,  but  the 
sight  of  whom  always  made  Nedda  uneasy  and  filled 
her  with  a  vague  alarm.  With  a  good  woman's  sen- 
sitiveness she  felt  danger  in  the  way  he  looked  at 
her,  and  she  shrank  into  the  back  of  the  stall  when- 
ever he  appeared.  Sometimes  the  stall  keeper  was 
occupied  and  she  was  obliged  to  serve  him,  and  it 
seemed  to  her  that  he  generally  appeared  just  when 
they  were  most  busy. 

Though  clearly  of  foreign  extraction,  perhaps  an 
Italian,  a  Spaniard,  or  a  Greek,  he  had  evidently 
grown  up  in  America,  if  he  had  not  been  born  here, 
as  he  spoke  only  English,  of  which  she  was  glad,  for 
when  he  tried  to  enter  into  conversation  with  her 
while  she  was  doing  up  his  bundle,  she  pretended  not 
to  understand  his  remarks.  This  did  not  prevent  his 
pinching  her  arm  on  several  occasions  when  she  was 
so  employed,  and  only  the  thought  of  her  baby  and 
the  fear  of  losing  her  place,  for  he  was  a  steady  cus- 
tomer, prevented  her  from  throwing  the  package  of 
fruit  in  his  face. 

One  day  the  proprietress,  who  seemed  to  know  the 
affairs  of  most  of  her  patrons,  volunteered  the  in- 
formation to  Nedda  that  he  was  a  "  bad  man,"  who 
owned  "a  joint"  near  by;  "but,"  she  continued, 
"  he  makes  plenty  of  money  and  is  a  good  spender, 
so  it 's  none  of  my  affair."  This  intelligence  only 
confirmed  Nedda's  suspicions,  for  she  had  felt  a  sinis- 
ter and  forbidding  something  about  this  man  ever 
since  she  first  saw  him.  She  became  the  more  re- 
served whenever  he  appeared  and  avoided  serving 
him  every  time  she  could. 


VIII 

THE  days  passed  on  with  varying  fortunes  for 
Nedda.  Her  place  was  a  hard  one,  her  em- 
ployer a  coarse,  bad-tempered  tyrant  who,  when  in 
an  ill  humor,  which  was  not  infrequently  the  case, 
took  an  unconcealed  delight  in  bullying  and  hector- 
ing her  poor  little  assistant  and  in  "  driving  "  her 
for  all  she  was  worth.  Nedda  found  that  she  was 
seldom  free  to  go  home  before  nine  or  half  past  at 
night,  though  the  hour  understood  had  been  eight 
o'clock,  save  on  Saturday  nights,  and  when  she  did 
return  she  was  frequently  almost  dropping  from 
fatigue. 

Moreover,  the  baby  was  clearly  suffering  from  lack 
of  attention  and  the  long  hours  by  itself,  and  Nedda, 
who  was  so  tired  and  spent  when  she  got  back,  was 
finding  it  more  and  more  difficult  to  nurse  it.  It  was 
now  nearly  six  months  old  and  the  teething  period, 
always  a  trying  time,  was  approaching  and  the  baby 
was  growing  fretful  and  restless.  Nedda  often  en- 
tered the  room  to  find  it  whimpering,  and  her  heart 
sank  within  her  at  the  thought  that  it  might  often 
be  crying  and  unhappy  all  alone.  But  what  could 
she  do.''  There  was  not  enough  money  to  hire  any- 
one to  look  after  it ;  she  could  not  wholly  make  both 
ends  meet  as  it  was.  It  was  too  cold  at  the  fruit 
stand  to  take  her  baby  with  her,  and  she  was  so  busy 
there  that  she  could  have  given  it  no  care  if  it  had 


58  THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 

been  by  her  side.  So  she  tried  to  be  brave  and  to 
persuade  herself  that  all  was  going  on  well,  though 
the  baby's  thinness  and  palor  and  its  evident 
wretchedness  wrung  her  heart  whenever  she  looked 
at  it. 

She  had  received  no  reply  from  Marco  or  from  her 
old  grandmother  since  she  wrote  to  them,  though 
more  than  seven  weeks  had  passed.  Inasmuch  as  she 
had  work,  she  was  not  worrying  quite  so  much  at 
their  not  having  sent  her  any  assistance ;  but  the 
non-receipt  of  news,  especially  from  Marco,  tortured 
her  with  suspense.  What  if  he  were  dead?  She  had 
never  felt  so  alone  before,  so  overborne  with  anxiety. 
Her  baby  was  ill,  her  Marco  gone,  swallowed  up  in 
the  great  tide  of  war,  her  own  strength  failing  from 
overwork  and  worry,  and  there  was  no  one  to  help 
her,  not  one  friend  to  encourage  her  by  word  or 
smile.  It  was  hard,  very  hard,  and  Nedda  in  her 
bitterness  and  hopelessness  sometimes  found  it  diffi- 
cult to  pray  any  more  to  the  Madonna,  who  seldom 
seemed  to  hear  her. 

It  was  true  that  she  had  found  work,  but  what 
work!  She  felt  that  a  slave  could  not  be  treated 
more  harshly  or  driven  harder  through  the  twelve 
weary  hours  when  she  was  at  the  beck  and  call  of  her 
employer.  The  latter  seemed  to  begrudge  more  and 
more  even  the  two  short  half  hours  at  twelve  and 
four  o'clock,  when  Nedda  went  back  to  nurse  her 
baby,  though  it  had  been  understood  that  she  should 
have  these  brief  interv^als.  Often  the  woman  made 
up  for  them  by  holding  Nedda  as  late  as  possible, 
after  her  long  day's  work  should  have  been  done,  to 
assist  in  various  additional  duties. 


THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA  69 

Christmas  and  New  Year's  had  passed  uneventfully 
and  Nedda  was  thankful  for  the  rush  of  business  on 
those  days  to  occupy  her  mind,  for  otherwise  her 
loneliness  would  have  been  unbearable.  She  lighted 
two  small  candles  before  the  picture  of  the  Madonna 
on  Christmas  Eve  and  again  at  New  Year's,  and 
prayed  there  with  her  baby  in  her  arms.  But  she 
could  not  keep  back  the  thought  of  a  year  ago,  when 
she  had  her  Marco  with  her,  and  the  memories  of 
every  other  previous  holiday  in  her  life,  when  she 
had  always  been  among  relatives  and  friends.  The 
sense  of  her  complete  isolation  bore  in  on  her  and 
overwhelmed  her,  and  she  found  herself  sobbing  even 
in  the  midst  of  her  prayers.  She  knew,  however, 
that  she  must  continue  to  be  brave,  if  she  were  to 
go  on ;  so  she  crowded  back  the  flood  of  memories, 
dried  her  eyes,  and  forced  herself  to  be  calm.  Luckily 
the  hard  work  of  the  day  had  on  each  occasion  so 
exhausted  her  that  mercifully  she  soon  found  a  refuge 
in  sleep. 

It  was  now  mid-January  and  bitterly  cold  weather. 
Nedda,  who  had  only  a  shawl  for  extra  protec- 
tion, found  it  hard  to  keep  warm  during  all  the  long 
hours  standing  at  the  entrance  to  the  stall  in  the 
open  air.  Her  hands  suffered  most,  for  she  could 
not  do  her  work  with  mittens  on.  The  elder  woman, 
who  possessed  a  warm  cloak,  sat  sheltered  in  a  corner 
at  the  rear  of  the  booth  most  of  the  time  and  made 
Nedda  do  all  of  the  cold  work  and  even  the  making 
of  the  change,  which  required  bare  hands,  though  she 
observed  Nedda  carefully  from  her  comer. 

This  was  a  difficult  task  for  Nedda,  as  she  could 
never  get  accustomed  to  this  strange  foreign  currency. 


60  THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 

The  buyers  were  sometimes  impatient  to  conclude  the 
transactions  and  be  ffonc,  which  confused  her  the 
more.  To  take  twelve  cents'  worth  of  apples  and  fif- 
teen cents'  worth  of  bananas  out  of  a  dollar  in  a  hurry 
and  give  the  right  sum  in  return  was  a  breathless 
business,  and  she  often  wondered  how  she  got 
through  it. 

Her  mistress,  who  sat  watching  with  an  eagle 
eye,  often  came  forward  to  consult  her  about  the 
last  sale  and  Nedda's  heart  stood  still  meanwhile, 
for  fear  there  might  be  a  mistake.  Once  she  caught 
herself  in  an  error  just  in  time,  and  the  customer, 
who  was  a  decent  young  fellow,  returned  the  over- 
amount  he  had  received.  This  experience  made 
her  the  more  nervous  and  she  prayed  for  warmer 
weather,  when  the  proprietress  would  again  handle 
the  money. 

Under  such  conditions  of  overwork,  fatigue,  and 
worry  Nedda  would  have  been  more  than  human  if 
an  accident  or  mistake  of  some  kind  had  not  occurred. 
The  inevitable  happened  one  cold,  damp  evening, 
when  she  was  aching  in  every  joint  and  ready  to 
drop  from  exhaustion.  The  fruit  woman  was  sitting 
huddled  up  as  usual  in  the  back  of  the  recess,  very 
surly  from  the  effect  of  too  much  alcoholic  indulgence 
the  night  before,  and  still  worse  tempered  because 
of  a  poor  day's  trade.  A  customer  appeared  and 
bought  a  number  of  different  kinds  of  fruit,  after 
much  changing  around  and  redeciding,  which  in  itself 
was  very  confusing  to  the  poor  little  saleswoman. 
At  last  the  package  was  made  up  and  paid  for,  but 
hardly  had  the  purchaser  left  when  Nedda's  employer 
came  forward  from  her  corner  to  investigate.     She 


THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA  61 

looked  at  the  slip  on  which  Nedda  had  entered  the 
amount  and  made  her  enumerate  the  different  kinds 
of  fruit  which  she  had  sold,  and  even  as  she  did  so 
Nedda  remembered  that  she  had  neglected  to  charge 
ten  cents  for  three  apples. 

The  woman  descended  on  the  omission  like  some 
savage  creature  on  its  prey,  and  her  wrath  was  mer- 
ciless. She  accused  Nedda  of  trying  to  cheat  her, 
denounced  her  as  dishonest  and  a  "  bad  lot,"  and 
even  threatened  to  give  her  over  to  the  police.  Nedda 
tried  to  explain  and  offered  to  make  good  the  loss, 
but  the  enraged  vender  refused  to  listen  and  con- 
tinued to  vituperate.  She  almost  pushed  Nedda  out 
of  the  booth,  telling  her  that  she  was  through  with 
her  and  had  had  enough  of  her.  Though  a  week's 
wages  were  almost  due  her,  the  stall  keeper  made  no 
suggestion  of  paying  the  same  and  kept  reiterating 
that  Nedda  had  been  cheating  her  out  of  much 
money. 

The  poor  girl  was  no  match  for  this  virago,  and 
indeed  she  was  glad  to  get  away  from  such  vilification 
and  invective.  She  left  the  place  in  silence,  followed 
by  savage  abuse,  which  echoed  in  her  ears  long  after 
she  had  reached  her  room.  The  baby  was  evidently 
more  ailing  than  usual,  which  distracted  Nedda's 
attention  somewhat  from  her  misfortune;  but  min- 
gled with  the  denunciations  of  the  woman,  which 
still  seemed  to  pursue  her,  a  bitter  refrain  kept  re- 
peating itself  in  her  ears:  "What  will  you  do  now.? 
What  will  you  do  now.?  "  for  she  saw  that  she  was 
confronted,  and  in  mid-winter,  with  the  same  terrible 
situation  as  before  she  had  finally  found  a  position 
at  the  stall. 


62  THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 

There  was  a  good  deal  less  than  twenty  dollars 
now  in  the  bank,  for  Nedda  had  been  forced  to  draw 
small  sums  almost  weekly  to  help  out  with  the  coal 
and  other  extras.  In  two  or  three  weeks  at  most 
she  would  be  destitute,  and  her  heart  sank  within  her, 
since  she  knew  that,  in  such  weather,  destitution 
meant  death  for  the  baby,  if  not  for  her. 

She  finally  decided  to  return  to  the  booth  and 
plead  with  the  mistress  to  take  her  back  again.  It 
was  a  hard  thing  to  do,  but  she  recognized  that  she 
must  flinch  from  nothing  to  protect  her  child.  When 
she  got  there,  however,  she  saw  another  girl  even 
more  youthful  than  herself  already  filling  her  place, 
and  she  understood  why  the  proprietress  had  been 
so  willing  to  discharge  her:  she  had  found  a  younger 
assistant  who  could  probably  work  for  less  wages. 


IX 

NEDDA  turned  away  with  such  a  sense  of  defeat 
and  hopelessness  as  she  had  never  felt  before. 
It  seemed  as  if  all  doors  were  closed  against  her 
and  as  though  there  were  no  escape  from  the  grim 
spectre  that  stalked  silently  beside  her.  Retracing 
her  steps  to  her  room,  she  replenished  the  fire  and 
nursed  the  baby ;  but  she  was  wholly  broken  in  spirit 
and  benumbed,  and  what  she  was  doing  seemed  to 
her  almost  useless,  for  it  was  only  putting  off  the 
inevitable  by  a  few  days.  Why  nurse  the  child, 
why  try  to  keep  the  place  warm,  when  they  would 
soon  be  without  either  heat  or  food.?  Would  it  not 
be  better,  more  humane  to  them  both,  for  they  were 
both  suffering,  to  take  her  little  one  and  walk  down 
to  the  harbor,  so  near  by,  and  end  it  all  at  once.'' 

She  dared  not  raise  her  eyes  to  the  Madonna,  for 
she  was  aware  that  such  thoughts  were  sinful;  but 
she  had  not  the  strength  to  combat  them,  and  indeed 
the  idea  of  death  began  to  have  a  strange  fasci- 
nation for  her.  Death,  at  least,  offered  an  escape 
from  her  tragic  condition  —  from  want  and  heart 
hunger  and  uncertainty  and  apprehension. 

However,  as  the  hours  passed,  something  in  her 
brought  back  the  old  fighting  spirit,  the  determina- 
tion to  save  her  child  if  she  could,  and  she  made  up 
her  mind  to  try  at  once  for  employment,  perhaps  in 
some  other  fruit  store.     She  had  learned  how  to  sell 


64  THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 

fruit  and  how  to  pack  it  and  deliver  it  and  perhaps 
some  dealer  might  want  help.  She  started  out  at 
once  and  wandered  until  it  was  dark,  asking  at  every 
fruit  stall  for  work.  She  found  her  way  to  the 
market,  where  there  were  many  such  dealers,  but 
wherever  she  applied  the  answer  was  always  the 
same.  No  one  seemed  in  need  of  assistance,  or  per- 
haps it  was  her  foreign  appearance  and  broken 
English  that  were  against  her. 

She  came  home  long  after  it  was  dark,  more  dis- 
pirited than  before,  if  that  were  possible,  and  so 
weary  that  she  had  hardly  the  strength  to  take  her 
clothes  off  and  crawl  into  bed.  The  baby  was  sleep- 
ing, which  was  a  relief,  for  she  knew  that  she  was 
too  spent  to  be  able  to  nurse  it  until  she  had  had 
some  rest.  So  greatly  was  she  exhausted  that  she 
fell  asleep  almost  at  once,  but  it  was  a  troubled 
sleep,  filled  with  the  sense  of  impending  calamity, 
and  indeed  sorrow  seemed  to  be  as  much  her  bed- 
fellow as  her  companion  by  day. 

Towards  morning  she  awoke  to  find  the  baby  rest- 
less and  feverish.  She  took  it  up  and  tried  to  nurse 
it,  but  it  refused  nourishment,  just  as  it  had  done 
when  it  had  been  so  ill  before.  As  the  hours  dragged 
on  it  seemed  to  grow  worse  and  she  feared  she  must 
again  go  for  the  doctor;  but  with  so  little  money 
left,  how  could  she  do  so?  What  of  the  rent  and 
what  of  the  coal?  If  she  had  to  pay  a  doctor,  they 
might  be  without  enough  money  left  even  to  go 
through  another  week.  What  good  would  it  do  to 
cure  her  child  if,  immediately  it  was  better,  they 
must  both  face  starvation?  So  she  struggled  on 
and  tried  to  comfort  the  baby  as  best   she  could. 


THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA  66 

But  it  did  not  grow  better,  and  finally  she  decided 
she  must  try  to  find  help. 

She  went  to  the  consulate  to  ask  whether  there 
was  a  hospital  where  she  might  take  it.  The  consul 
was  busy  and  could  not  see  her,  but  his  clerk  received 
her.  Inasmuch  as  she  was  an  alien,  he  told  her  that 
her  position  with  regard  to  the  city  charities  and 
the  hospitals  was  more  difficult,  and  that  there  might 
be  a  good  deal  of  red  tape  and  some  delay  in  getting 
her  infant  received  into  a  hospital.  There  was,  how- 
ever, a  branch  dispensary  of  one  of  the  hospitals 
at  an  address  which  he  gave  her,  and  if  she  would 
carry  the  baby  there  during  visiting  hours,  he 
thought  they  would  treat  it  free  of  charge,  though 
she  would  probably  be  expected  to  pay  something 
for  the  medicine. 

The  day  was  bitterly  cold  and  Nedda  hesitated 
to  take  her  poor  little  feverish  mite  out  into  such 
weather,  but  she  saw  that  something  must  be  done 
and  so,  wrapping  it  up  as  warmly  as  she  could  and 
hugging  it  tight  to  her  breast,  she  started  on  her 
way.  It  was  a  long  walk  to  quite  a  different  quarter 
of  the  city,  and  she  had  to  show  the  paper  on  which 
the  address  was  written  many  times  to  different  per- 
sons before  she  found  the  dispensary.  It  was  al- 
most past  the  hour  for  consultations  when  she  got 
there,  but  they  let  her  in,  and  after  sitting  some  time 
in  the  waiting  room  for  her  turn,  she  was  ushered 
into  a  small  office,  where  a  young  doctor  took  the 
child  from  her  and  examined  it. 

"  Your  baby  is  anaemic  and  under-nourished,*' 
he  said.  "  Are  you  nursing  it .''  You  look  underfed 
yourself  and  in  no  condition  to  nurse  a  child.     If 


66  THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 

you  wish  to  keep  on  doing  so,  you  must  eat  more 
and  get  in  better  shape.  The  child  is  much  run 
down  and  besides  has  a  cold.  Take  it  home  and 
give  it  this  medicine,"  he  continued,  handing  her  a 
prescription.  "  Keep  it  warm  and  in  a  sunny  room, 
and  above  all  look  after  yourself,  if  you  want  to 
nourish  the  baby  properly.  Rest  as  much  as  you 
can  and  eat  well  every  day.  Do  you  mind  me?  "  he 
concluded  sharply,  as  she  remained  silent. 

Yes,  she  understood;  how  well  she  understood. 
He  was  asking  the  impossible,  scolding  her  for  what 
she  could  not  do,  could  not  give.  She  tried  to  ex- 
plain, but  with  her  scanty  English  the  words  would 
not  come  to  her,  and  as  the  doctor  seemed  to  con- 
sider the  visit  at  an  end,  she  turned  away  with  the 
baby  in  her  arms,  his  recipe  crumpled  in  her  hand, 
and  mad  despair  aching  and  tearing  at  her  heart. 

She  went  first  to  the  druggist's  on  her  way  home 
and  got  the  prescription  filled.  He  looked  at  the 
baby  doubtfully,  as  he  handed  her  the  bottle,  and 
said,  "  Get  that  child  in  the  house  as  soon  as  possible 
and  in  a  warm  place ;  it  has  fever  and  should  never 
have  been  taken  out  such  a  day  as  this."  Nedda's 
heart  sank  within  her  and  she  hurried  home  through 
the  cold  twilight  as  fast  as  she  could. 

Once  in  the  house  she  made  up  a  fire  and  tried  to 
warm  and  nurse  the  baby,  but  it  still  refused  nour- 
ishment. Then  she  gave  it  the  medicine  as  directed, 
but  as  the  hours  wore  on  its  condition  grew  clearly 
worse.  It  was  moaning  and  whimpering  and  e\'i- 
dently  in  pain,  and  whoever  has  heard  a  baby  moan 
will  know  what  that  meant  to  Xedda.  She  gave  the 
dose  again  and  again,  but  to  no  effect. 


THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA  67 

Finally  she  determined  to  act  for  herself.  She  saw 
that  the  child  was  in  much  the  same  state  as  on 
the  night  of  its  first  illness,  when  the  American 
doctor  whom  she  could  no  longer  afford  to  employ 
had  cured  it.  It  had  the  same  flushed  face  and 
glassy  eyes  and  seemed  to  breathe  in  the  same  queer, 
thick  way.  Why  not  try  the  remedy  the  other 
doctor  gave  her  on  the  previous  occasion?  She  still 
had  the  recipe.  She  snatched  up  her  shawl  and 
ran  out  in  the  winter  night  to  the  drug  store. 

In  a  short  time  she  was  back  again  with  the  little 
bottle.  She  gave  a  dose  to  the  child  and  subse- 
quently other  doses,  as  formerly,  every  two  hours. 
The  effect  was  not  so  marked  as  then,  but  gradually, 
as  the  night  wore  on,  the  child  seemed  better  and 
towards  morning  the  fever  dropped.  She  realized 
that  his  condition  was  far  more  serious  than  it  had 
ever  been  and  she  decided  to  continue  the  medicine 
through  the  day,  fearing  a  return  of  the  high  fever. 
Gradually,  however,  it  grew  better,  and  when  even- 
ing brought  no  appreciably  higher  temperature, 
Nedda  knew  that  she  had  saved  her  child. 

It  had  been  a  hard  struggle.  Throughout  the 
preceding  night  she  had  not  slept  or  relaxed  her 
vigilance  for  a  moment,  ever  crooning  over  the  baby, 
rocking  it,  soothing  it,  and  always  watching  it,  al- 
ways on  the  alert,  giving  the  medicine,  keeping  the 
fire  up,  so  that  the  room  might  not  get  colder. 
Every  fibre  of  her  vitality,  all  her  strength  which 
had  been  so  spent,  so  gone,  but  a  few  hours  previ- 
ously, seemed  to  have  come  back  to  her  and  she 
was  exerting  herself  as  never  before  in  this  fight 
with  the  grimmest  of  opponents. 


68  THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 

Broken  in  spirit  and  in  body  as  she  was,  worn 
and  exhausted  and  hopeless  as  she  had  become,  she 
was  now  calling  up  all  of  her  remaining  force, 
physical  and  spiritual,  and  using  it  without  reserve 
for  the  one  great  object  —  to  save  her  child.  What 
would  happen  later  she  did  not  know,  she  could  not 
think,  but  save  her  child  she  must. 

In  the  loiieliness  and  silence  she  fought  on,  dog- 
gedly, unflinchingly,  for  the  poor,  throbbing  little 
mite  at  her  heart,  and  so  great  had  been  her  concen- 
tration in  this  last  desperate  encounter  with  fate 
that,  when  the  baby  was  better,  she  seemed  for  the 
time  to  have  forgotten  the  other  issue  which  con- 
fronted her.  For  two  days  she  stayed  by  the  baby, 
wholly  absorbed  in  its  care  and  in  the  immeasurable 
joy  of  having  it  safe  again.  The  constant  nursing 
and  unremitting  attention  did  much  to  restore  the 
child,  and  at  last  she  felt  that  it  was  decidedly 
stronger. 


XTEDDA  was  recalled  to  a  sense  of  her  situation  by 
i.^  a  knock  at  the  door;  it  was  the  collector  after 
the  week's  rent.  She  did  not  have  the  amount  in 
hand,  for  in  her  agitation  over  the  child  she  had 
forgotten  to  go  to  the  bank.  The  agent  looked  at 
her  suspiciously,  but  agreed  to  call  again  in  an  hour, 
and  Nedda  hastened  away  for  the  money.  She  drew 
only  enough  to  cover  the  rent,  light,  and  hire  of 
furniture  for  the  seven  days  which  had  just  ended 
and  to  pay  for  coal  and  a  little  food  the  coming 
week.  To  her  dismay  she  saw  that  on  the  following 
Saturday  there  would  be  barely  enough  money  in 
the  bank  to  pay  the  rent,  etc.,  to  that  date  and 
carry  her  on  through  part  of  the  ensuing  week. 
This  meant  no  food  or  coal  after  ten  days'  time  and 
eviction  for  non-payment  of  rent  in  two  weeks'  time. 
As  soon  as  she  had  settled  her  debts  Nedda  took 
out  the  poor  little  deposit  book  and  laboriously 
verified  its  figures,  in  the  hope  that  by  some  mistake 
in  the  same  more  balance  might  yet  remain  to  her 
credit.  But  there  was  no  such  error  and  Nedda 
saw  that  she  had  now  but  ten  days,  or  at  most  two 
weeks  of  grace,  before  they  would  be  wholly  desti- 
tute. She  would  gladly  have  gone  without  much, 
if  any,  food,  but  she  knew  that  if  she  did  not  eat 
she  could  not  continue  to  nourish  the  child,  which 
was  already  becoming  difficult  for  her.     As  for  coal. 


70  THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 

to  economize  that  was  equivalent  to  inviting  Death 
to  come  for  her  baby. 

She  made  up  lier  mind  that,  whatever  the  effort, 
she  must  find  work,  and  she  started  again  in  pursuit 
of  the  same  within  an  hour.  She  was  unsuccessful 
and  the  following  day,  being  Sunday,  she  had  no 
opportunity  to  continue  the  search.  On  Monday 
she  tried  again,  going  to  many  shops  and  even  to 
private  houses,  asking  for  employment.  But  the 
thin,  pretty  Italian  girl  with  a  shawl  over  her  head, 
the  startled,  faun-like  eyes,  and  hesitating,  confused 
speech  did  not  seem  to  impress  those  she  appealed  to 
as  a  suitable  domestic  or  saleswoman,  and  though 
some  persons  were  more  kind  than  others,  ever^Tvhere 
she  met  refusal. 

She  returned  to  her  room  on  Tuesday  evening  to 
find  her  baby  again  worse,  and  for  all  that  night 
and  the  day  following  she  had  a  hard  struggle  to 
pull  it  around.  By  Thursday  she  was  again  on  the 
tramp,  but  her  courage  was  gone,  her  strength  was 
visibly  failing,  and  people  seemed  to  regard  her  in- 
creasing hesitation  and  nervousness  with  suspicion. 
Friday  was  indeed  a  black  day  for  Nedda,  for  there 
was  a  blinding  snowstorm  and  it  blew  a  gale,  forcing 
her  to  remain  indoors. 

Saturday  was  rent  day  and  she  went  to  the  bank 
and  drew  her  remaining  eight  dollars.  They  took 
her  bank  book  and  she  understood  that  her  credit 
was  at  an  end.  She  paid  the  week's  rent,  light,  and 
for  the  use  of  the  furniture,  and  with  a  sort  of  reck- 
lessness of  despair  laid  in  two  dollars'  worth  of  coal 
and  thirty  cents'  worth  of  kindling,  feeling  that  she 
must  be  sure  of  heat  for  the  week  at  anv  rate. 


THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA  71 

When  these  matters  were  settled  there  remained 
just  one  dollar  and  sixty  cents  between  Nedda  and 
starvation.  She  would  do  her  best  to  make  that  last 
as  long  as  possible;  but  if  she  starved  she, knew  but 
too  well  that  the  baby  would  starve  also,  while  if  she 
tried  to  feed  it  on  cow's  milk  that  would  cost  as  much 
as  to  eat  sufficiently  herself  and  nurse  it.  It  was  a 
desperate  outlook,  but  Nedda  was  so  numbed  by 
suspense  and  suffering  that  she  faced  it  more  calmly 
than  she  had  ever  done  before. 

She  still  searched  for  work,  but  though  she 
tramped  the  city  and  presented  herself  at  all  kinds 
of  places,  no  one  seemed  to  want  her.  Some  were 
very  kind.  At  one  house  they  sent  her  into  the 
kitchen  and  offered  her  food,  saying  she  looked  cold 
and  hungry.  At  another  place  a  woman  gave  her  a 
pair  of  boots,  hers  being  almost  soleless.  In  an  office 
building  they  found  her  a  day's  work,  helping  to 
clean  out  a  vacant  shop,  and  paid  her  a  dollar  for  it. 
But  work,  permanent  work,  she  could  not  find,  try 
as  she  would. 

By  Thursday  night  her  money  was  exhausted  all 
but  ten  cents,  and  she  threw  herself  on  her  knees  in 
front  of  the  Madonna  in  a  passionate  supplication 
for  help.  She  remained  in  prayer  much  of  the  night, 
for  she  could  not  sleep,  and  on  the  following  morn- 
ing she  sat  nursing  her  baby,  white  and  dry  eyed, 
with  breaking  heart,  when  there  came  a  knock  at 
the  door.  It  was  the  postman  with  a  registered 
letter. 

She  signed  for  the  same,  but  when  she  found  her- 
self alone,  she  hesitated  for  a  moment  to  open  it. 
Her    heart    seemed    to    stand    still.      Was    it    from 


72  THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 

Marco?  Was  it  good  news  or  bad  news?  She  did 
not  recognize  the  handwriting,  but  then  Marco 
wrote  so  poorly,  someone  would  be  sure  to  write  the 
address  for  him.  She  prayed  for  a  moment  with 
silent  intensity  that  it  might  not  contain  bad  tidings. 
Then  she  found  courage  to  open  the  envelope.  It 
enclosed  a  few  well-written  sheets  of  paper  and  a 
postal  order  for  fifty-three  lire. 

The  communication  was  not  from  Marco,  but 
from  her  dear  old  grandmother,  written  of  course 
by  the  priest.  It  was  a  sad,  rambling  account,  evi- 
dently taken  down  by  the  priest  just  as  grand- 
mother had  dictated  it.  They  were  so  sorry  to 
hear  she  was  in  such  need.  They  hoped  she  would 
soon  find  work  till  Marco  returned  to  her.  They 
were  very  poor  themselves.  The  war  had  made 
everything  so  dear  and  everyone  was  finding  it  very 
hard.  They  had  no  money,  but  grandmother  had 
sold  her  old  donkey,  her  sciecco,  for  fifty  lire  and 
the  harness  for  five,  and  they  were  sending  Nedda 
fifty-three  lire,  which  was  about  what  remained 
after  paying  for  the  postal  money-order  and  the 
postage.  Grandmother  would  not  miss  the  donkey 
much,  the  missive  continued,  for  there  was  little  work 
to  be  done  now  at  this  season.  So  Nedda  was 
cautioned  not  to  worry,  and  they  hoped  the  money 
would  reach  her  safely  and  be  of  help.  They  all 
sent  her  much  love  and  the  priest  sent  her  his 
blessing. 

Nedda  let  fall  the  first  tears  over  this  letter  which 
she  had  been  able  to  shed  for  days,  and  it  was  a 
relief  to  be  able  to  cry  again.  What  it  cost  her  poor 
old   grandmother   to   part   with   her   sciecco   Nedda 


THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA  73 

well  knew,  for  the  donkey  is  the  Sicilian  peasant's 
best  friend  and  helper.  After  she  had  gone  to  the 
post  office  and  collected  the  seven  dollars  and  forty 
odd  cents  due  on  the  postal  order  at  the  equivalent 
value  of  the  American  currency,  she  felt  a  sense  of 
guilt  in  having  been  the  cause  of  such  a  sacrifice 
for  a  return  which  here,  in  this  expensive  land, 
would  assist  her  so  little.  A  week's  expenses  at  most 
was  all  that  this  poor  sum  would  pay  for,  and  for 
this  her  grandmother  had  parted  with  her  sole  aid 
and  standby  —  her  donkey ! 

With  the  money  in  her  hands  she  thanked  the 
Madonna  with  an  overflowing  heart,  for  had  not  her 
prayers  of  the  night  before  been  answered?  Was 
not  this  a  chance  to  keep  a  roof  over  their  heads  for 
another  week,  while  she  could  make  continued  eflforts 
to  find  work? 


XI 

WHEN  Nedda  had  paid  her  rent  the  next  day 
and  the  other  charges  and  had  laid  in  a  supply 
of  coal,  there  was  only  a  dollar  and  eighteen  cents 
left  for  her  food  and  incidentals.  She  saw  that  so 
small  a  sum  would  barely  last  through  the  week. 

Fortunately,  however,  she  had  thought  of  another 
way  to  get  some  money.  She  would  pawn  most  of 
her  things,  especially  those  she  did  not  need  at  this 
season.  These  consisted  of  two  summer  dresses,  one 
thick  dress,  and  her  linen,  together  with  some 
suits  of  Marco's  which  he  had  not  taken  with  him, 
and  last  of  all  there  were  her  few  little  pieces  of 
jewelry  and  knickknacks.  She  could  redeem  them  all 
later,  when  she  had  found  work  or  when  Marco  re- 
turned, so  that  she  would  not  lose  them.  In  the 
vicinity  there  were  several  pawnshops,  and  Nedda 
knew  that  they  would  lend  money  on  almost  any 
object,  provided  it  had  value. 

She  set  out  to  do  it  at  once,  with  all  her  extra 
clothes  and  other  things  made  up  securely  into  a 
stout  bundle.  She  had  no  idea  which  would  be  the 
best  place  to  go,  so  she  went  to  the  first  one  she 
came  to.  She  hesitated  for  a  moment  at  the  entrance, 
over  which  hung  three  large  gilt  balls,  somewhat 
shabby  and  needing  regilding.  What  should  she 
say?  Would  they  accept  her  things.''  Perhaps  they 
had  as  many  of  such  as  they  cared  for.''     Second- 


KTi; 


Xedda's  Quarter 


THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA  76 

hand  clothes  were  hanging  on  hooks  by  the  door  and 
within  there  appeared  to  be  a  quantity  of  clothing; 
indeed  all  these  things  seemed  much  newer  and  better 
than  what  she  had  brought  with  her. 

She  looked  in  the  window.  There  were  several 
pieces  of  jewelry,  some  watches,  a  silver  belt  buckle, 
a  tray  of  postage  stamps  of  various  countries,  and  a 
number  of  other  articles  spread  out  inside  the  glass 
in  heterogeneous  array.  She  supposed  they  had  each 
been  pledged  by  someone  and,  not  having  been  re- 
deemed, were  now  offered  for  sale  just  as  in  the  shops 
in  Italy,  after  having  been  bid  in  at  auction.  In  one 
corner  of  the  window  was  an  old  violin,  very  much 
worn  by  usage,  marked  fifteen  dollars.  She  wondered 
whether  that  too  had  been  originally  left  in  pawn 
by  some  poor  musician,  and  whether  he  had  loved 
it  a  great  deal  and  was  very  unhappy  to  part  with 
it.  She  apprehended  that  many  other  people  were 
facing  the  same  troubles  as  she,  and  the  sense  of  the 
sorrows  of  others  somehow  gave  her  courage  in  the 
thought  that  she  was  not  alone  in  her  poverty  and 
difficulties. 

As  Nedda  entered  the  shop  she  recognized  the 
person  in  charge  as  a  patron  of  the  fruit  stall,  whom 
she  had  often  served.  This  made  her  hopeful  that 
the  woman  would  be  less  exacting  with  her;  for  like 
most  of  the  poor,  who  have  usury  as  their  next 
door  neighbor,  she  had  a  native  dread  of  those 
whose  business  it  is  to  profit  from  the  necessities  of 
distress. 

If  the  pawnbroker  recalled  her,  she  gave  no  sign  of 
so  doing,  but  opened  the  bundle  and  appraised  its 
contents  in  a  most  impassive  manner.     It  took  her 


76  THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 

a  little  time  to  go  through  Nedda's  eflFects:  three 
dresses,  one  of  them  her  best  dress  of  very  good 
cloth,  several  chemises  and  other  underclothing,  two 
suits  of  Marco's,  his  cap,  and  a  few  shirts  of  his, 
two  brooches,  a  neck  chain  and  a  pair  of  earrings 
given  her  by  Marco,  different  ribbons  for  holiday 
wear,  and  a  pretty  embroidered  collar  which  she 
wore  with  her  best  dress  and  which  was  her  greatest 
treasure.  There  were  also  a  real  tortoise-shell  comb 
which  Marco  had  given  her,  a  silver  thimble,  and  a 
beautiful  bright  shawl  which  had  been  her  mother's 
and  which  she  used  only  on  special  occasions. 

This  was  her  collection,  and  knowing  that  all  these 
things  must  have  cost  a  great  deal  of  money  when 
purchased,  perhaps  much  more  than  a  hundred  dol- 
lars, and  that  all  were  serviceable  and  some  as  good 
as  new,  Nedda  hoped  for  a  loan  of  at  least  twenty- 
five  dollars  on  the  same. 

After  a  searching  inspection  of  everything  in  the 
pile  the  woman  said  laconically :  "  Four  dollars." 
Nedda  was  so  surprised  that  she  thought  she 
must  have  misunderstood.  The  pawnbroker,  seeing 
Nedda's  stupefaction,  repeated  still  more  indiffer- 
ently :  "  Four  dollars  is  all  anyone  will  give  you  on 
this  rubbish,"  and  turned  away  unconcernedly  to 
serve  another  customer,  leaving  the  garments  spread 
out  on  the  counter. 

Nedda  was  so  overcome  that  she  could  hardly  col- 
lect her  ideas.  "  Four  dollars !  "  She  knew  that 
such  an  offer  for  all  her  possessions  was  an  outrage, 
worse  than  a  refusal.  The  gold  in  the  jewelry  alone 
must  be  worth  as  much.  Yet  what  was  she  to  do, 
where  was  she  to  go.''     The  other  pawnshops  might 


THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA  77 

give  her  no  more,  and  indeed  her  courage  was  com- 
mencing to  fail. 

Though  the  customer  had  left,  the  woman  paid 
no  attention  to  Nedda,  apparently  leaving  her  to 
collect  her  goods  and  do  up  her  bundle  if  she  were 
not  satisfied.  She  stood  hesitating,  trying  to  gain 
confidence  to  ask  for  better  terms.  The  proprietress, 
like  a  spider,  kept  just  out  of  reach,  covertly  watch- 
ing. Finally  Nedda  ventured  to  cross  the  shop  to 
her.  "  Will  you  not  give  me  more  ?  "  she  found  the 
courage  to  say  in  her  sweet,  hesitating  way.  "  My 
baby  is  ill  and  my  husband  is  at  the  war,"  she  con- 
tinued appealingly.  "  It 's  all  they  're  worth,"  the 
woman  replied  impersonally,  but  in  a  little  more 
responsive  tone  than  before,  for  it  was  impossible 
not  to  be  touched  by  Nedda's  appeal. 

"  But  they  are  all  good  things,"  Nedda  pleaded ; 
"  they  cost  much  money."  "  The  dresses  are  out  of 
fashion,"  the  woman  said,  "  and  the  ornaments  are 
only  plated  stuff."  This  statement  was  but  partly 
true  and  the  pawnshop  keeper  knew  it,  for  only  one 
brooch  and  the  back  part  of  another  were  plated  and 
the  earrings  and  chain  were  of  gold;  but  then  it 
was  the  girl's  business  to  kn<3w  the  value  of  her  prop- 
erty, the  woman  reasoned,  and  if  she  did  n't  so  much 
the  worse  for  her. 

"  Plated !  "  Surely  Marco  would  not  have  given 
her  plated  jewelry  for  her  name  day  thought  Nedda. 
"Plated.'"'  Why,  he  had  always  told  her  they 
were  real  gold.  He  must  have  been  cheated,  poor 
Marco.     Nedda's  eyes  filled  with  tears. 

The  proprietress  was  observing  her  narrowly. 
Nedda's  lips  were  quivering,  the  tears  were  begin- 


78  THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 

ning  to  trickle  down  her  pale  cheeks.  "  But  the 
other  things,  all  my  husband's  clothes  and  my 
linen?"  she  queried.  "All  the  rest  is  of  no  value 
to  us,"  her  interlocutor  replied.  "  We  just  allow  a 
little  on  it  to  oblige  you.  The  man's  suits  are  a  good 
deal  worn  and  spotted,"  she  continued,  taking  up  a 
coat  and  pointing  out  a  spot  to  Nedda.  "  It  would 
cost  as  much  to  clean  them  and  put  them  in  shape  as 
we  could  sell  them  for."  "  But  I  mean  to  redeem 
them,"  faltered  Nedda.  "  We  have  to  be  prepared 
for  your  not  redeeming  them,"  the  adroit  creature 
answered,  with  a  well-simulated  impatience.  "  And 
my  embroidered  collar,"  Nedda  added,  "  it  is  all  by 
hand."  "  Not  the  fashion,"  snapped  the  other, 
turning  her  back  to  Nedda  and  arranging  some 
clothes.  "  We  could  not  sell  it  in  a  twelve-month," 
she  volunteered  over  her  shoulder. 

"  Will  you  not  give  me  a  little  more.''  "  supplicated 
Nedda.  "  My  baby  is  so  ill  and  I  am  out  of  work." 
The  woman  went  across  to  the  articles  and  turned 
them  over  again  indifferently  with  an  annoyed  ex- 
pression, as  though  she  were  being  importuned  be- 
yond the  limit  of  endurance.  "  I  '11  give  you  five 
dollars  on  them,"  she  saM  curtly.  "  We  're  taking  a 
risk,  but  seeing  your  baby  's  sick,  I  '11  let  you  have 
five  on  them,  though  my  husband  will  blame  me  for  it 
when  he  comes  in."  Nedda  looked  on  helplessly,  try- 
ing to  come  to  a  decision,  but  too  disappointed  to  be 
able  to  think  very  clearly. 

The  pawnbroker  evidently  interpreted  Nedda's 
silence  as  consent  and,  gathering  the  things  up 
hastily,  as  if  her  time  and  patience  had  been  al- 
ready too  long  trespassed  upon,  passed  with  them 


THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA  79 

into  the  inner  office.  In  a  couple  of  minutes  she  re- 
turned with  a  printed  slip  on  which  a  rough  inven- 
tory of  the  goods  was  entered  in  ink  and  also  the 
amount  advanced.  She  placed  the  paper  ^nd  a  five- 
dollar  bill  in  Nedda's  hand  in  a  patronizing  manner, 
as  though  she  were  doing  an  act  of  the  most  con- 
siderate philanthropy,  saying  as  she  did  so,  "  We 
usually  deduct  the  first  month's  interest  in  advance, 
but  seeing  you  need  the  money  so,  I  am  giving  you 
the  five  dollars  net." 

Nedda  held  the  paper  and  the  money  in  an  almost 
pulseless  hand.  She  tried  to  say  "  Thank  you,"  but 
the  words  stuck  in  her  throat.  The  woman  turned 
back  to  her  other  duties  unconcernedly  and  Nedda 
passed  silently  out  of  the  shop.  Defeat  stared  her 
in  the  face  more  relentlessly  than  ever.  She  had 
stripped  her  poor  little  home  of  practically  every- 
thing she  possessed,  leaving  only  the  clothes  of  the 
baby,  the  bed  linen  to  cover  it,  and  a  change  of  body 
linen  for  herself,  and  this  was  the  result  —  five  dol- 
lars, enough  to  stave  off  starvation  for  about  a 
week. 

In  her  distress  she  began  to  talk  aloud  to  herself 
in  the  street.  "  What  shall  I  do .?  I  must  find  work. 
I  must  find  work."  She  spoke  in  Italian,  and  her 
foreign  tongue  and  agitated  manner  caused  several 
people  to  look  at  her  as  they  passed,  but  she  was 
conscious  of  nothing  save  her  own  misery.  When 
she  had  reached  her  room  she  flung  herself  on  the 
bed  beside  the  baby,  with  the  money  and  pawn  ticket 
still  crushed  in  her  hand,  and  lay  there  in  despair. 

The  child  seemed  to  her  to  divine  her  unhappiness, 
for  it  turned  its  little  face  towards  her  and  stretched 


80  THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 

out  its  tiny  hand.  The  little,  appealing  movement 
brought  Nedda  to  herself  and  she  sat  up  and  took 
her  baby  in  her  arms  to  nurse  it.  After  all  she  had 
her  darling  still,  the  room  was  as  yet  theirs,  there 
was  enough  money  for  fuel  and  food  for  the  week, 
and  by  that  time  she  would  have  work. 


XII 

As  soon  as  the  child  had  been  nursed  and  put  to 
sleep  and  Nedda  had  regained  her  composure, 
she  started  out  to  tramp  the  city  once  more  in  search 
of  employment.  She  tried  stores,  laundries,  private 
houses,  eating  rooms,  but  always  without  success. 
Nobody  wanted  to  hire  this  pale,  desperate,  foreign- 
looking  girl,  hooded  in  a  faded  shawl,  who  hesitated 
when  she  approached  anyone  and  hardly  made  her- 
self understood. 

After  six  days  of  fruitless  endeavor  Nedda  found 
herself  on  the  eve  of  rent  day  with  only  sufficient 
money  left  to  pay  the  rent  and  for  the  hire  of  the 
furniture.  Of  gas  she  had  used  none.  There  was 
no  money  remaining  for  food  and  she  had  finished 
her  last  shovelful  of  coal.  The  fire  was  burning  out 
and  the  temperature  of  the  room  was  falling. 

In  her  desperation  she  decided  to  pawn  her  two 
pretty  rings  and  her  wedding  ring.  They  were  all 
she  had  left  of  value.  One  ring  Marco  had  given  her 
after  she  promised  to  marry  him.  It  was  gold  and 
had  a  red  stone,  which  must  be  worth  something,  she 
thought.  He  had  tramped  all  the  way  from  their 
mountain  village  down  to  Palermo  to  buy  it,  and  she 
knew  he  had  paid  dear  for  it.  The  other  ring  had 
a  blue  turquoise  set  in  it.  Marco  had  given  this  one 
to  her  the  day  after  she  had  confided  her  great  secret 
to  him  and  made  him  so  happy  in  the  knowledge  of 


82  THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 

his  coming  fatherhood.  Then  there  was  her  wedding 
ring  and  that  was  gold,  or  looked  like  gold;  for 
since  her  experience  with  the  pawnshop  woman 
Ncdda  was  not  sure  of  the  quality  of  anything. 

She  decided  to  go  to  a  better  part  of  the  city, 
where  she  had  also  seen  pawnshops  and  where  she 
hoped  they  might  be  more  liberal  with  her.  So  she 
walked  from  the  North  End  down  Tremont  Street, 
past  Boylston  Street,  until  she  came  to  a  street  run- 
ning off  Tremont  Street  in  that  vicinity.  Here  she 
looked  for  and  found  a  pawnshop  which  she  remem- 
bered having  seen  when  she  was  searching  for  work. 

She  entered  with  less  hesitation  than  on  the  previ- 
ous occasion  at  the  other  shop  and,  slipping  her 
three  rings  from  her  fingers,  approached  the  counter. 
The  proprietor  behind  it  was  momentarily  busy  with 
another  customer,  and  as  Nedda  waited  she  looked 
at  the  three  poor  little  rings  she  treasured  so  dearly, 
her  last  precious  things  to  be  given  up,  for  she  was 
still  girl  enough  to  cling  to  her  trinkets.  Then  she 
thought  of  her  position  and  her  baby  and  handed 
the  rings  quickly  over  the  counter  to  the  keen-eyed 
individual  confronting  her. 

"Do  you  want  to  pawn  them.''  "  he  asked  curtly, 
squinting  at  them.  She  nodded  her  head  affirma- 
tively. After  a  couple  of  minutes'  investigation  at 
the  back  of  the  shop  he  returned  and  handed  her  a 
pawn  ticket,  together  with  fifty  cents.  She  counted 
it  with  care:  a  quarter,  two  dimes,  and  a  five-cent 
piece.  The  amount  seemed  so  pitifully  small  in  com- 
parison with  her  cherished  treasures,  her  all,  that 
after  a  moment's  hesitation  she  found  courage  to  ask 
for  more.    He  out  her  short  immediately.     "  It 's  all 


THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA  83 

we  can  allow.  The  stones  are  valueless  to  us  and  we 
give  nothing  on  them.  The  gold  is  merely  nine  carat 
and  on  that  we  allow  only  by  weight.  You  can  have 
your  rings  back,  if  you  are  n't  satisfied,  but  you 
won't  do  better."  His  manner  was  so  decided  that 
she  knew  it  was  hopeless  to  move  him.  She  felt  more 
as  though  she  were  talking  to  a  machine,  rather  than 
to  a  man,  as  she  looked  into  the  expressionless  face 
and  listened  to  the  dry  voice. 

Quickly  unbuttoning  her  dress  at  the  throat,  she 
unfastened  the  thin  gold  chain  with  its  tiny  round 
medal,  bearing  a  relief  of  her  protecting  saint,  which 
she  had  worn  ever  since  her  childhood,  and  laid  it 
on  the  counter.  He  took  back  the  ticket,  examined 
the  medal  and  chain,  and  after  making  another  entry 
on  the  ticket,  handed  it  back  to  her  with  an  addi- 
tional thirty  cents,  saying  shortly :  "  That 's  the  limit 
on  it."  She  hesitated  for  a  brief  instant ;  then  she 
thought  again  of  her  baby,  lying  in  the  fireless  room. 
This  money  would  at  least  buy  coal  enough  for  a 
couple  of  days  or  so,  and  she  left  the  shop  without 
more  delay. 

She  hastened  back  across  the  city  to  the  North 
End  and  purchased  sixty  cents'  worth  of  coal  and 
kindling  and  ten  cents'  worth  of  macaroni  for  her- 
self, for  she  had  eaten  nothing  since  the  day  before. 
Out  of  the  ten  cents  which  remained  she  purchased 
three  cents'  worth  of  cheese  to  season  the  macaroni 
and  a  two-cent  box  of  matches.  She  hurried  on 
to  the  room,  carrying  some  of  the  fuel  herself  in  the 
skirt  of  her  dress,  to  save  time,  and  made  up  the  fire, 
which  was  quite  out. 
The  place  was  already  very  cold,  but  the  child 


84  THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 

seemed  sleeping.  It  was  only  when  she  touched  it 
that  she  was  shocked  to  find  how  frigid  its  little  face 
and  hands  were.  She  took  it  up  from  the  bed  and 
did  her  best  to  warm  it  against  her  body.  The  fire 
was  an  interminable  time  burning  up  and  the  tem- 
perature of  the  room  rose  but  slowly.  The  child 
appeared  chilled  through  and  was  strangely  quiet. 
It  did  not  wish  anything  when  she  tried  to  nurse  it, 
and  when  she  finally  induced  it  to  take  nourishment, 
she  found  for  the  first  time  since  the  baby's  birth 
that  she  had  practically  none  to  give  it.  She  re- 
membered again  that  she  had  eaten  nothing  that 
day,  and  tucking  the  baby  up  in  the  bed,  she  set  her- 
self to  prepare  and  eat  the  macaroni. 

By  the  time  she  had  finished,  the  room  was  at  last 
warm  and  the  baby  became  more  active  and  began  to 
make  its  wants  known.  She  attempted  once  more  to 
nurse  it,  but  was  still  unable  to  do  so.  She  realized 
that  it  would  take  time  to  assimilate  the  food  she  had 
eaten,  but  the  baby  was  hungry  and  crying.  What 
was  she  to  do.''  She  still  had  five  cents  left  from  the 
eighty  cents,  and  with  the  nickel  in  her  hand  she 
snatched  up  an  empty  jug,  hurried  to  the  near-by 
shop,  and  purchased  a  pint  of  milk.  She  brought 
it  back  and  warmed  it  and  was  thankful  that  the 
baby  took  it  without  trouble.  It  was  the  first  occa- 
sion that  he  had  seemed  to  relish  cow's  milk ;  but 
then  she  knew  that  he  was  very  hungr}',  for  she  had 
not  nursed  him  since  noon  and  it  was  now  eight 
o'clock  at  night. 

After  a  time  the  baby  fell  asleep  and  Xedda  sat 
by  its  side,  considering  what  to  do.  She  had  just 
enough  money  put  by  in  the  drawer  to  pay  the  rent 


THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA  86 

and  the  furniture  hire  the  following  morning,  and 
she  had  now  bought  sufficient  coal  for  two  days,  that 
would  be  until  Monday,  and  there  was  also  some 
macaroni  left  for  another  meal  for  herself  tb-morrow. 

If  she  got  no  work  then,  she  might  have  to 
starve  over  Sunday,  but  that  did  not  much  matter, 
provided  she  could  only  manage  to  nurse  the  baby. 
If  not?  Nedda  shuddered.  She  comprehended  but 
too  well  that  starvation  for  herself  meant  starvation 
for  her  child,  unless  she  could  manage  to  get  some 
more  cow's  milk;  but  how,  with  no  money.''  She 
must  find  employment  in  the  morning;  she  must, 
even  if  only  a  job  for  a  few  hours;  and  in  her  ten- 
sion and  anxiety  she  threw  herself  once  again  on  her 
knees  beside  the  bed  and  poured  out  pitiful  supplica- 
tions to  the  Madonna,  smiling  down  on  her  so  ten- 
derly from  the  little  frame  above. 

It  was  the  one  thing  of  any  value  she  had  refused 
to  pawn,  her  picture  of  the  Madonna  with  the  little 
Jesus.  Even  her  wedding  ring  was  gone  from  her, 
but  her  Madonna  she  had  saved.  Surely  her  Ma- 
donna would  help  her,  would  not  let  her  baby  starve. 
In  the  stress  of  her  emotion  Nedda  talked  aloud  to 
the  picture,  appealed  to  it,  admonished  it,  explained 
to  it,  and  as  she  talked  and  prayed  she  seemed  gradu- 
ally to  reassure  herself.  Or  was  it  exhausted  nature 
which  came  to  her  rescue.''  For  she  became  quiet  and 
even  began  to  look  forward  to  the  morrow  with  a 
certain  confidence.  Surely  the  Madonna  must  help 
her,  would  help  her,  had  promised  to  help  her,  and 
she  would  succeed. 


XIII 

IN  the  morning,  after  a  few  hours  of  wearied  and 
perturbed  sleep,  Nedda  found  herself  again  able  to 
nurse  her  baby.  When  she  had  tended  to  its  wants 
and  made  up  a  good  fire,  she  waited  for  the  rent  col- 
lector. He  appeared  promptly,  and  having  paid  him 
with  her  remaining  money,  she  put  her  shawl  over 
her  shoulders  and  set  out  resolutely  on  her  quest  for 
something  to  do. 

It  was  a  cold,  dark  day  in  early  February  and  the 
reaction  of  mid-winter,  after  the  stir  of  the  holiday 
season,  seemed  to  have  communicated  itself  to  the 
weather  as  well.  People  looked  dispirited  and  were 
unresponsive. 

More  determined  than  ever  before,  Nedda  forced 
her  way  into  shops  and  offices,  pleading  for  employ- 
ment with  an  insistence  which  would  have  surprised 
her,  if  she  had  not  been  so  preoccupied  with  the  one 
idea  of  getting  work  at  all  costs.  Everywhere  the 
answer  was  the  same:  there  was  nothing  for  her  to 
do.  In  some  places  people  were  polite,  in  others 
brusque,  and  in  one  or  two  instances  she  was  sum- 
marily ordered  out  of  shops,  even  before  she  had  ex- 
plained herself,  with  "  No  beggars  are  allowed  on 
these  premises,"  or  words  to  that  effect.. 

By  three  o'clock  she  concluded  that  it  was  hope- 
less to  try  to  accomplish  anything  more  at  present, 
as  her  strength  was  failing.  jMoreover,  she  knew 
that  the  baby  must  be  hungry  and  in  need  of  her. 


THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA  87 

She  returned  to  the  room  to  find  the  fire  burned 
almost  out,  but  the  warmth  of  the  place  had  not  yet 
lessened  very  much,  owing  to  the  excellent  fire  she 
had  made  before  starting.  The  baby  was  hungry 
and,  tired  as  she  was,  she  forced  herself  to  nurse  it 
and  succeeded  in  so  doing.  Then  she  put  it  to  sleep 
and,  as  darkness  was  falling,  started  out  anew  on 
her  dreary  search. 

Most  of  the  stores  were  shutting,  but  there  were 
night  restaurants  and  lunch  counters  open,  and  in 
some  of  these  she  hoped  to  find  a  job  as  dish-washer 
or  scrub-woman.  Her  efforts,  however,  were  fruitless 
and  at  ten  o'clock  at  night  she  staggered  back  to  her 
room  with  nothing  save  starvation  to  look  forward  to. 

Though  the  child  was  hungry,  she  was  wholly 
unable  to  nurse  it.  Again  the  insistent  question : 
What  was  she  to  do.''  In  her  agony  of  despair  and 
apprehension  she  walked  restlessly  around  the  room, 
with  clenched  hands  and  white,  tortured  face.  The 
child  was  crying  pitifully  for  nourishment  all  the 
while.  Finally  it  fell  asleep,  and  Nedda  lay  down 
beside  it  and  soon  passed  into  the  deep  sleep  of  com- 
plete exhaustion. 

It  was  near  morning  when  the  child's  crying  woke 
her  and  she  sat  up  in  bed,  feeling  dazed  and  very 
weak  and  faint.  But  the  mother  instinct  was  strong- 
est in  her,  so  she  took  the  baby  and  tried  to  nurse 
it.  She  discovered  it  was  still  impossible:  she  had 
no  nourishment  to  give.  After  an  hour  of  vainly 
endeavoring  to  soothe  it  she  could  bear  its  piteous 
appeals  no  longer  and  made  up  her  mind  to  go  out 
and  beg  for  a  little  money  in  the  streets,  so  that  she 
might  buy  milk. 


88  THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 

When  she  foiiiul  licrself  on  the  street,  however,  it 
being  Sunday  morning  and  the  hour  early,  the  side- 
walks were  almost  deserted.  She  stopped  one  or  two 
people  and  tried  to  ask  for  money,  but  they  either 
did  not  understand  her  or  brushed  her  by  indiffer- 
ently, and  she  finally  sat  down  without  hope  on  a 
doorstep.  She  did  not  even  dare  to  return  to  her 
child,  for  she  could  not  bring  herself  to  hear  it  cry- 
ing for  the  food  which  she  could  not  give. 

As  she  sat  on  the  step  in  the  cold  morning  air, 
huddled  up  in  misery  and  exhaustion,  her  glance 
casually  rested  on  an  object  at  her  feet.  It  was  a 
small  bottle  of  milk !  For  a  second  her  heart  seemed 
to  stop  beating,  she  could  not  breathe.  She  was 
hardly  able  to  trust  her  sight  and  took  the  bottle  in 
her  hand.  Yes,  it  was  heavy,  full  of  milk,  just  left 
there  apparently  by  the  milkman.  She  put  it  down 
again  beside  the  step,  but  it  fascinated  her,  held  her ; 
she  could  not  take  her  eyes  away  from  it.  Her  mind 
worked  feverishly  with  an  alertness  in  marked  con- 
trast to  her  torpor  of  a  few  minutes  before.  She 
saw  that  she  must  decide  quickly,  for  at  any  mo- 
ment the  door  might  open  and  the  bottle  disappear. 
It  was  her  last  chance;  she  knew  it.  If  she  took  it 
she  would  be  a  thief;  but  then  her  child  was  starv- 
ing. She  would  be  a  thief  and  she  could  no  longer 
look  honest  people  in  the  face,  but  her  baby  would 
be  saved.  What  mattered  it  what  she  became,  if  she 
might  save  her  baby.''  She  seized  the  bottle,  hid  it 
under  her  shawl,  and  hurried  away  through  the  silent 
street,  not  daring  to  think  what  she  had  done  or  to 
look  around. 

When  she  reached  her  room  she  tasted  the  milk. 


THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA  89 

Yes,  it  was  the  morning's  milk,  fresh  and  sweet.  She 
warmed  it  and  gave  it  to  the  child,  who  drank  it 
with  avidity.  A  wild,  feverish  satisfaction  filled  her. 
Her  little  one  was  saved !  i 

What  of  herself.''  She  did  not  care.  She  knew 
that  she  was  a  thief,  that  she  was  no  longer  fit  to 
look  at  the  Madonna  qt  to  pray  to  her;  but  she  did 
not  care,  she  had  saved  her  baby.  That  thought 
she  gripped  tight  to  her  heart,  as  her  darling  fell 
quietly  asleep,  its  hunger  satisfied. 

It  was  a  hard  day  for  Nedda,  for  she  was  worn  out 
almost  to  the  state  of  illness  and  had  had  nothing 
to  eat  since  she  finished  the  macaroni  the  day  before. 
There  was  still  some  of  the  milk  left,  but  that  she 
must  keep  for  the  baby's  supper.  She  was  tortured 
with  apprehension  and  fears  for  the  morrow,  for  she 
had  lost  all  confidence  in  finding  work,  and  by  the 
morning  she  would  be  without  both  fuel  and  food. 
She  almost  wished  that  she  had  been  caught  stealing 
the  milk,  for  then  she  would  have  been  arrested  and 
perhaps  the  police  would  have  listened  to  her  story 
and  taken  care  of  her  child,  even  if  she  had  to  go  to 
prison. 

That  thought  brought  a  ray  of  hope  to  her.  Why 
not  go  to  the  authorities  and  ask  for  assistance.'' 
Surely  there  must  be  some  help  for  her  in  this  big 
rich  city  —  they  would  not  let  her  starve.  Her  pride 
revolted  for  a  moment  at  the  idea  of  being  a  public 
pauper ;  but  that  was  no  worse  than  begging  in  the 
streets,  as  she  had  tried  to  do  that  morning.  She 
decided  to  go  at  once  in  the  morning  for  aid,  for 
to-day  was  Sunday  and  she  knew  all  agencies  were 
closed. 


XIV 

THE  morning,  which  was  bitterly  cold,  found 
Nedda  famished  and  dizzy  from  weakness. 
She  made  up  the  fire  with  the  remnants  of  the  coal 
and  started  out  immediately  on  her  quest  for  public 
charity,  for  she  dreaded  lest  the  baby  should  awake 
and  cry  for  food  which  she  could  not  give. 

She  went  into  the  centre  of  the  city,  to  a  busy 
crossing  where  she  knew  she  would  find  a  policeman 
on  duty,  and  going  up  to  him  she  tried  to  ask  him 
where  she  should  apply  for  assistance  for  her  baby 
and  herself.  She  had  thought  what  to  say  in  ad- 
vance, but  when  she  began  to  speak,  the  English 
words  failed  her. 

The  oflBcer,  not  being  able  to  make  out  what  she 
was  talking  about,  sought  to  shake  her  off,  but  she 
stuck  to  him  in  desperation  and  finally  conveyed 
something  of  her  meaning  to  him.  He  advised  her  to 
go  to  a  certain  charitable  association  and  directed 
her  how  to  get  there,  but  she  would  not  leave  him 
until  he  had  written  the  address  for  her  on  a  bit  of 
paper.  "  As  you  are  a  foreigner,"  he  said,  "  you 
had  better  apply  there  than  to  the  city."  She  fol- 
lowed enough  of  his  words  to  understand  that,  as 
had  been  explained  to  her  at  the  consulate,  being  an 
alien  made  it  harder  for  her  to  get  help. 

She  made  her  way  to  the  office  of  this  well-known 
charity,  only  to  find  that  it  did  not  open  till  eight 


THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA  91 

o'clock.  When  the  hour  arrived  and  she  made  her 
wants  known  to  the  superintendent,  she  was  told 
that  she  must  apply  to  the  divisional  bureau  in  her 
own  district,  the  North  End.  She  got  him  to  write 
out  the  street  and  number  for  her  and  hastened 
back  to  her  quarter  and  to  the  place. 

The  person  in  charge  was  very  kind,  but  very 
deliberate.  She  wanted  to  know  all  about  Nedda. 
Had  she  any  references.''  Why  had  not  the  priest 
helped  her.''  She  told  Nedda  frankly  that  the  or- 
ganization was  using  all  of  its  resources  to  assist 
those  already  on  its  list  and  that  she  could  not 
promise  anything.  The  case  would  be  investigated, 
however,  and  if  an  urgent  one  the  society  would  do 
its  best  to  aid  her.  Where  did  Nedda  live.''  The 
secretary  took  down  the  address  and  agreed  to  send 
someone  to  make  inquiries  in  a  day  or  two.  More 
than  that  could  not  be  promised,  for  the  charity  was 
very  busy.  In  the  meantime  Nedda  should  apply  to 
her  priest  and  also  get  a  reference  from  him. 

Nedda,  wholly  desperate,  tried  to  explain  that  she 
could  not  wait  for  a  day  or  two,  that  she  must  have 
help  at  once;  but  her  slight  command  of  English 
failed  her  in  the  intensity  of  her  emotion  and  the 
good  lady  seemed  a  little  shocked  by  Nedda's  im- 
portunity and  excitement.  She  reiterated  that 
Nedda's  case  would  be  looked  into  just  as  soon  as 
was  possible,  and  with  that  she  closed  the  book  in 
which  she  had  the  entries,  with  an  air  of  decision  and 
finality. 

She  was  clearly  a  kind,  sweet,  earnest  woman, 
who  was  devoted  to  her  work,  but  she  felt  that  she 
had  responsibilities  which  forbade  her  being  stam- 


92  THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 

peded  by  this  excitable  little  creature,  who  appeared 
to  expect  immediate  succor  without  any  guarantees 
that  it  was  justified.  Moreover,  there  was  the  ques- 
tion to  be  decided  wlicther  the  society  could  under- 
take to  give  any  more  relief  than  it  was  already 
dispensing  in  that  section  of  the  city ;  for  its  present 
obligations  this  very  hard  winter  were  exceptional 
and  all  its  resources  requisitioned. 

That  Ncdda  was  in  such  grievous  and  pressing 
need  the  secretary  did  not  at  all  comprehend.  Surely 
this  young  person  could  manage  to  get  along  for  a 
day  or  two  until  the  society  could  sift  the  facts,  the 
good  woman  reasoned.  Indeed  she  did  not  quite 
know  whether  to  explain  Nedda's  excitability  and 
insistence  as  nerves  or  temper  or  both. 

Nedda  realized  that  it  was  useless  to  plead  fur- 
ther, for  she  saw  that  she  had  not  made  clear  her 
extreme,  urgent  necessity,  so  she  stumbled  out  of 
the  place  as  best  she  could.  What  was  she  to  do.'' 
Ever  the  insistent  question  arose:  What  was  she  to 
do.''  The  baby  must  be  awake  now  and  crying  for 
food.  Where  should  she  go.''  The  lady  had  men- 
tioned the  priest.  She  had  not  seen  him  since  her 
baby  was  christened,  for  she  had  felt  that  she  could 
not  afford  to  go  to  church,  which  meant  a  donation 
in  the  plate,  and  she  feared  she  must  be  in  bad 
standing  with  the  father,  if  he  remembered  her  at  all. 

Nevertheless  she  directed  her  steps  to  the  church 
and  rang  the  bell  at  the  priest's  house  adjoining. 
An  Italian  domestic  appeared,  who  insisted  on  know- 
ing her  business.  Speaking  in  her  native  tongue, 
with  the  directness  of  desperation,  Nedda  explained 
herself.     Her  husband  was  at  the  war  and  she  and 


THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA  93 

her  baby  were  without  money.  She  needed  imme- 
diate assistance. 

Only  on  Wednesdays  and  Saturdays  did  the  father 
receive  those  who  wished  alms,  the  womap  replied. 
If  she  would  come  then,  she  could  perhaps  see  him ; 
but  it  was  uncertain  whether  he  could  give  her  any 
money,  for  there  were  many,  a  great  many  such  as 
she  who  were  already  being  helped  by  the  church 
and  it  was  very  doubtful  whether  the  father  could 
aid  any  others.  Only  the  most  urgent  cases,  where 
there  were  several  children  or  illness,  were  being 
attended  to.  She  was  young  and  must  find  em- 
ployment. 

Nedda  began  to  protest,  but  the  servant  was 
evidently  accustomed  to  this.  Wednesday  was  the 
day  for  such  cases,  and  if  she  would  return  then, 
probably  the  father  would  see  her.  With  that  the 
door  was  slowly  shut  in  her  face. 

Nedda  turned  back  into  the  cold  street,  feeling  as 
though  Death  were  walking  beside  her.  She  knew 
that  by  now  the  baby  must  be  crying  for  food  — 
starving !  Again  the  terrible  question :  What  should 
she  do?  She  passed  the  milk  shop  and  in  despair 
went  in  and  begged  them  to  trust  her  for  some  milk 
for  the  baby;  but  the  proprietor  was  out  and  the 
girl  in  charge  said  that  she  did  not  dare  to  do  so  on 
her  own  responsibility. 

Nedda  stole  out  again  into  the  freezing  air  of 
the  street.  What  could  she  do?  If  she  but  had 
something  left  to  pawn.  As  she  hastened  along  in 
fear  and  apprehension,  her  shawl  slipped  from  her 
head  and  she  raised  her  hand  to  readjust  it.  The 
touch  of  her  shawl  gave  her  an  idea.     Her  shawl ! 


94  THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 

Why  not  pawn  that?  It  was  old  and  much  used, 
but  they  miglit  give  her  something  for  it  —  enough 
to  get  a  little  milk. 

She  hurried  to  the  nearest  pawnshop,  the  one 
where  he  had  pledged  most  of  her  things.  She 
slipped  the  covering  from  her  head  and  shoulders 
and  offered  it  over  the  counter.  The  woman  was 
as  imperturbable  as  ever.  She  took  the  shawl  and 
examined  it ;  then  handed  it  back.  "  Too  worn," 
she  said  briefly.  But  Nedda  insisted.  "  Can't  you 
give  me  something  on  it.?  "  she  implored.  "  I  must 
buy  milk  for  my  baby."  The  pawnbroker  took  the 
garment  in  her  hand  again  impassively.  "  Five 
cents,"  she  said.  "  But  not  as  a  loan,  it 's  too  much 
trouble.  I  '11  buy  it  for  that."  Nedda  made  a 
motion  of  assent.  She  was  too  spent  to  speak.  The 
woman  handed  her  the  five  cents  and  took  the  shawl. 

Nedda  went  quickly  from  the  place  back  to  the 
dairy.  She  placed  the  five  cents  on  the  counter 
and  asked  for  a  pint  of  milk.  "  There  will  be  five 
cents  more  as  deposit  on  the  bottle,"  she  was  in- 
formed. Nedda  had  wholly  forgotten  about  the 
bottle.  She  shuddered.  The  cold  and  this  final 
difficulty  were  too  much  for  her. 

Leaving  the  five  cents  with  the  girl,  she  ran  shiv- 
ering through  the  frosty  street  to  her  room  for  the 
jug.  When  she  arrived  the  fire  was  out  and  the 
baby  awake  and  crying  pitifully.  She  dared  not 
take  it  in  her  arms  for  fear  she  might  not  have  the 
courage  to  put  it  down,  and  time  must  not  be  lost. 
She  seized  the  vessel  and  in  a  few  moments  reached 
the  shop.    The  jug  filled,  she  sped  again  to  the  room. 

There  was,  alas,  no  fire  to  warm  the  milk.     She 


THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA  95 

offered  it  cold  to  the  baby,  but  he  refused  it.  What 
should  she  do?  She  tried  to  warm  the  jug  against 
her  naked  breast,  but  both  receptacle  and  contents 
were  stone  cold.  The  child  looked  ghastly  and 
wailed  piteously.  What  should  she  do?  What 
could  she  do?  A  thought  came  to  her.  She  took  a 
small  quantity  of  the  milk  into  her  mouth  at  a  time 
and  warmed  it,  then  allowed  it  to  run  very  carefully 
from  her  mouth  into  the  spoon,  and  started  to  feed 
it  to  the  baby.  It  was  no  longer  cold  and  the  child 
accepted  it. 

By  this  slow  process  she  fed  the  poor  little  thing 
about  fifteen  or  twenty  spoonfuls  of  the  milk,  which 
was  all  it  appeared  to  be  able  to  take  in  its  weakened 
condition.  Then  she  put  the  baby  back  on  the  bed 
and  covered  it  with  all  the  bedclothes  to  protect  it, 
but  the  frail  wee  mite  had  little  heat  of  its  own  left 
in  its  wasted  body  and  it  seemed  hopeless  to  attempt 
to  keep  it  warm,  as  the  room  was  growing  bitterly 
cold. 

Nedda  herself  was  almost  at  the  last  extreme  of 
weakness  and  so  chilled  through,  without  her  shawl, 
that  she  had  to  walk  around  the  room  to  prevent 
herself  from  shivering.  It  was  now  nearly  noon  on 
Monday,  and  as  she  had  not  eaten  since  Saturday, 
she  was  literally  starving. 

She  thought  if  she  rested  on  the  bed  for  a 
moment  she  would  feel  less  faint  and  she  could  get 
under  the  coverings,  together  with  the  child,  from 
the  cold.  She  did  so  and  shortly  lost  consciousness. 
How  long  she  lay  there  she  did  not  know,  but  when 
she  came  to  herself  she  was  stiff  in  every  joint  and 
so  weak  that  she  could  hardly  rise. 


96  THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 

She  got  up,  and  as  she  did  so  the  neighboring 
church  clock  struck  four.  The  baby  was  appar- 
ently asleep.  She  touched  its  cheek ;  it  was  very 
cold,  even  colder  than  her  own  hand,  she  thought, 
and  its  lips  looked  blue.  She  shivered  with  appre- 
hension. Was  it  dead.'*  She  touched  it  again.  It 
moved  feebly.     No,  it  was  still  alive. 

She  warmed  some  milk  in  her  mouth  and  tried  to 
feed  it,  but  she  could  not  seem  to  arouse  it  from  its 
torpor.  She  put  it  down  again  and  covered  it  with 
the  bedclothes.  Again  the  crucial  question :  What 
could  she  do.?  What  could  she  do.'*  She  would  have 
taken  the  bed  coverings  and  pawned  them,  but  to 
do  so  she  would  have  had  to  leave  the  baby  uncov- 
ered, and  without  something  over  it  the  child  would 
surely  freeze  to  death  before  she  could  get  coal  with 
the  proceeds  of  the  pledge  and  warm  the  room.  She 
thought  of  taking  some  of  the  chairs,  though  they 
were  not  her  property,  only  rented  with  the  othei 
furniture,  to  the  pawnshop,  but  she  knew  that  sht 
no  longer  had  the  strength  to  carry  even  a  chaii 
so  far. 

Again  the  relentless  question:  What  could  she 
do?  Could  she  ask  assistance  from  anyone  in  the 
building.''  Useless.  It  was  a  tenement  house  of  the 
poorest  order  and  poverty  was  all  around  among 
her  fellow  countrywomen,  many  of  them  with  their 
bread-winners  away  at  the  war.  There  had  been 
two  evictions  for  non-payment  of  rent  within  the 
last  few  weeks. 


XV 

THERE  was  nothing  to  do  but  to  go  into  the 
street  once  more  and  beg,  or  steal  if  she  could 
find  anything  to  take.  She  turned  towards  the  door, 
but  the  room  seemed  to  whirl  around  and  she  found 
that  she  was  too  faint  to  walk.  But  she  must  do  it, 
so  she  drank,  very  reluctantly,  some  of  the  milk, 
sipping  it  slowly,  for  she  had  reached  the  stage  of 
starvation  when  she  was  no  longer  hungry. 

After  a  few  minutes  she  began  to  feel  a  little 
stronger,  and  with  a  last  glance  at  the  child,  which 
lay  in  a  sort  of  torpor  under  the  bedclothes,  she 
started  for  the  street.  Without  her  shawl,  which 
serves  the  Italian  working  woman  as  an  habitual 
covering  for  both  head  and  shoulders,  she  had  no 
protection  other  than  her  poor  dress  from  the 
weather,  but  she  was  past  thinking  of  herself.  It 
was  a  fight  with  Time  now  for  the  life  of  her  baby. 

She  considered  it  useless  to  try  to  beg  in  the  North 
End,  among  a  population  mostly  poor.  With  grim 
determination  she  sped  steadily  on  to  the  central 
part  of  the  city,  where  there  were  more  well-to-do 
persons  passing. 

It  was  nearly  six  o'clock  and  many  people  were 
hastening  along.  When  she  reached  Washington 
Street  she  appealed  to  several,  but  they  brushed  her 
aside  and  hurried  on.  Others  looked  suspiciously 
at  her,  out  in  the  winter  street  without  hat  or  coat 


98  THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 

or  other  outer  clothing,  and  she  began  to  lose 
heart. 

It  was  now  growing  late  and  the  crowd  was  thin- 
ning. At  last  she  caught  sight  of  a  well-dressed 
elderly  gentleman  coming  along  by  himself,  appar- 
ently on  his  way  home  from  his  office.  She  plucked 
up  all  her  courage  and  accosted  him,  holding  out  her 
hand  in  her  effort  to  make  herself  understood.  He 
hesitated  and  tried  to  pass  on,  but  in  her  frenzied 
need  she  caught  at  his  sleeve.  He  stopped  short  and 
fixed  her  with  a  glance  of  mixed  annoyance  and  sever- 
ity, for  he  clearly  misunderstood  the  nature  of  her 
request.  "  It  is  disgraceful,"  he  said  in  a  loud  voice, 
which  attracted  the  attention  of  several  passers-by, 
"  for  you  to  be  making  advances  in  this  way  to  men 
on  the  public  street,  and  so  young  a  girl  too !  If 
you  don't  take  your  hand  from  my  sleeve,  I  '11  call 
an  officer  and  have  you  arrested  at  once.  What  is 
our  city  government  coming  to,"  he  continued,  evi- 
dently for  the  benefit  of  the  bystanders,  "  that  women 
of  this  order  are  allowed  to  infest  the  streets  in  this 
manner.?  " 

As  soon  as  she  comprehended  the  import  of  his 
words  Nedda  let  go  her  imploring  hold  on  his  sleeve 
and  moved  quickly  away  among  the  crowd.  She  was 
completely  cowed  and  unnerved.  Taken  for  an  aban- 
doned woman,  threatened  with  arrest ;  she  fled  along 
the  crowded  thoroughfare  in  the  direction  of  the 
North  End.  Hardly  knowing  what  she  did,  she 
hastened  back  to  her  room,  like  some  hunted  animal 
seeking  safety. 

Though  the  weather  had  moderated  somewhat, 
the   room   was   like   a   vault  —  colder   than    outside. 


THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA  99 

she  thought.  The  baby  was  alive,  but  torpid.  She 
could  not  seem  to  wake  it,  and  when  she  endeavored 
to  arouse  it,  it  only  squirmed  in  her  arms  with 
a  querulous,  muflfled  cry,  as  though  it  did  not  wish 
to  be  disturbed.  Its  little  feet  were  icy  cold,  and 
though  she  tried  to  warm  them  by  chafing  them, 
she  could  not  succeed.  She  grew  still  more  desperate, 
for  she  realized  that  the  child  was  slipping  from  her, 
and  placing  it  back  in  the  bed  under  the  clothes, 
she  ran  blindly  down  the  stairs  and  out  into  the 
street,  determined  to  do  something,  anything,  to 
save  her  child. 

As  she  turned  a  corner  into  a  near-by  side  street 
she  came  upon  a  well-dressed  man  and  woman  who, 
standing  by  the  door  of  a  house  and  in  the  light  of 
the  street  lamp,  were  engaged  in  conversation.  She 
went  up  to  them,  without  giving  herself  time  to  think, 
and  asked  for  alms.  They  ignored  her  appeal.  She 
felt  that  she  must  make  them  listen  to  her  and  poured 
out  her  words  anyhow  in  her  scanty  English.  Her 
child  was  ill,  perhaps  dying  from  cold  and  hunger; 
she  was  without  money  or  food  or  fuel.  She  saw  that 
they  understood  her.  The  woman  was  the  first  to 
speak.  Why  did  she  not  find  work?  Nedda  broke 
forth  in  a  passionate  recital  of  her  fruitless  efforts 
to  do  so. 

Then  the  man,  who  had  begun  to  look  at  her, 
spoke,  and  the  minute  she  heard  his  voice  she  recog- 
nized him.  He  was  the  dreaded  customer  who  had 
so  often  persecuted  her  at  the  fruit  stall.  Even  in  her 
misery  and  recklessness  a  qualm  of  fear  passed  through 
her,  and  she  was  tempted  to  run  away,  but  she  put  it 
aside  in  the  thought  of  her  baby  and  faced  hijn. 


100  THE    STORY    01'    MO  1)1) A 

"  A  nice  little  girl  like  you  ought  not  to  be  in 
such  a  fix,"  he  said.  "  We  ain't  got  no  money  to 
give  you,  but  I  '11  put  you  on  easy  street  if  you  ain't 
too  particular."  He  looked  at  her  with  cold,  calcu- 
lating eyes.  Nedda  understood.  "  This  house  here 
belongs  to  me,  and  Vera  here  runs  it,"  he  continued, 
indicating  the  woman.  *'  We  've  got  some  nice  girls 
inside  and  a  nice  class  of  trade.  There  's  good  ready 
money  for  you  with  us.  Just  be  a  little  affectionate 
to  some  of  my  friends  and  you  '11  be  able  to  live  and 
take  care  of  your  kid  without  any  more  worry,  my 
girl,"  he  added  in  a  coaxing  tone. 

Nedda  made  no  reply;  she  stood  silent,  unrespon- 
sive before  them.  She  remembered  now  the  house 
before  which  they  were.  Once  in  summer  she  had 
taken  a  short  cut  through  that  street,  and  in  passing 
hastily  she  had  heard  ribald  laughter  from  behind 
the  closed  shutters ;  laughter  without  any  mirth  in 
it;  noisy,  strident  laughter  that  seemed  to  her  im- 
agination like  sounds  from  another  world,  a  horrible 
world,  where  there  was  no  truth  or  gentleness  or 
purity  or  trust  in  the  Madonna. 

"  You  '11  be  a  foolish  girl  to  let  a  good  chance  like 
this  go,"  put  in  the  woman  in  a  hoarse,  loose  voice. 
"  There  's  company  in  the  house  at  this  minute  and 
money  being  spent,  and  there  '11  sure  be  more  later 
in  the  evening,  for  the  motor  shew  's  brought  lots 
of  travelling  men  and  business  people  to  town  this 
week." 

"  In  three  hours  you  '11  make  five  dollars  sure," 
added  the  man,  "  and  that 's  more  than  you  'd  earn 
in  a  week,  if  you  had  a  job,"  he  said  patronizingly. 

Nedda    still    remained     silent.       They    evidently 


THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA  101 

thought  it  wisest  to  give  her  time  to  consider,  for 
it  was  easy  to  see  that  under  her  apparent  detach- 
ment she  was  trying  to  think. 

Then  she  spoke,  in  a  queer,  hollow,  little  voice, 
which  she  was  not  sure  was  her  own.  "  And  can  I 
go  back  to  my  baby  after  three  hours,  with  —  with 
the  money.''  " 

"  Sure  you  can  go  back  to  see  your  kid  every  day, 
and  you  '11  be  able  to  pay  somebody  to  mind  it  for 
you,  when  you  're  away,"  the  man  replied  in  a 
wheedling  tone. 

Nedda  did  not  answer;  she  stood  looking  straight 
in  front  of  her.  She  appeared  to  be  listening  to  some- 
thing unheard  by  the  others,  so  intent  was  she. 

The  woman  looked  behind  Nedda  at  her  com- 
panion, with  a  sly,  questioning  glance.  Was  it  safe 
to  let  the  girl  go  home,  once  they  had  her.''  The 
man  answered  that  look  with  a  confident,  satanic 
wink,  which  said  only  too  plainly :  "  No  danger. 
After  the  first  step  she  's  ours." 

Nedda  was  almost  unconscious  of  their  presence. 
Something  seemed  gripping  her  by  the  throat  and 
slowly  dioking  her.  She  thought  of  Marco,  far 
away  in  the  trenches,  fighting  for  Italy  and  for  her, 
trusting  her,  loving  her.  She  felt  that  she  was  say- 
ing "  Good-bye  "  to  him  forever.  She  prayed  that  he 
might  be  killed,  that  he  might  never  live  to  learn  what 
she  had  come  to  ;  he  would  then  be  safe  with  the  good 
angels  in  Paradise  and  would  never  know  the  truth. 

The  woman  made  a  movement  of  impatience,  but 
her  companion  restrained  her  with  a  glance.  He 
read  the  situation  with  sure  intuition  and  was  con- 
tent to  wait. 


102  THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 

Suddenly  the  cry  of  an  infant  in  some  near-by 
tenement  broke  the  stillness.  Nedda  started  and 
trembled.  It  seemed  to  her  for  an  instant  as  though 
her  own  little  one  were  crying  out  to  her.  She 
thought  of  it  all  alone  in  that  icy  room.  She  re- 
membered how  cold  its  tiny  feet  were  when  she  had 
tried  to  warm  them,  before  she  ran  out  into  the  street 
in  desperation.  Something  seemed  to  grip  her  by 
the  throat  again ;  she  struggled  to  breathe,  and  then, 
by  using  all  her  will,  she  found  the  power  to  speak. 
Her  voice  sounded  still  more  hollow  and  distant;  she 
was  not  sure  that  she  was  speaking,  that  her  words 
were  really  audible,  as  she  said :    "  I  '11  go." 

They  passed  through  that  dark  doorway,  too 
narrow  for  more  than  one  at  a  time.  The  woman 
went  first,  Nedda  next,  and  the  man  followed  as  a 
rear-guard.  The  door  closed  on  them,  and  there 
was  silence  in  the  deserted  street.  Only  the  creak- 
ing of  a  dilapidated  sign  broke  the  sinister  stillness 
and  desolation. 

A  taxi-auto  turned  the  corner  and  stopped  before 
the  door.  Two  men  got  out,  rather  ordinary  men 
of  the  type  of  commercial  travellers.  One  was  some- 
what drunk.  "  Is  this  the  place.''  "  he  asked  in  a 
thick  voice.  "  Yes,  this  is  the  house  I  told  you  of," 
the  chauffeur  replied.  "It's  a  Dago  joint  —  nice 
little  girls,  warm  babies.  They  '11  treat  you  well." 
One  of  the  men  paid  him,  while  the  other  rang  the 
bell.  The  door  opened  and  the  two  men  disappeared 
within.  It  closed  as  the  auto  glided  away.  The 
street  was  silent  again. 


AFTERWORD 

THIS  is  the  story  of  Nedda,  and  whatever  its 
demerits  it  has  one  merit  —  truth.  All  the 
destitute  of  the  war  are  not  in  Europe ;  some  of 
them  are  here  in  Boston,  right  at  our  doors.  If 
the  New  England  Italian  War  Relief  Fund  collapses, 
as  it  inevitably  will  collapse  within  a  short  time 
unless  immediate  and  substantial  help  is  now  forth- 
coming,^ the  forty-six  women  with  fifty-three  chil- 
dren whom  it  is  now  employing  here  in  Boston  to 
make  things  which  are  sent  to  the  hospitals  for  the 
Italian  wounded,  and  whom  it  is  thus  providing  with 
the  bare  necessaries  of  life,  will,  many  of  these  women 
and  little  children,  be  faced  by  just  such  destitution 
as  destroyed  Nedda.  The  other  charitable  organiza- 
tions in  the  North  End  are  financially  unable  to  take 
these  poor  people  over  —  they  have  said  so  —  and 
as  aliens  these  Italians  have  no  recognized  claim  on 
the  municipal  charities.  Less  than  one-third  of  those 
on  the  War  Relief's  books  "  are  entitled  to  and  re- 

*  It  costs  the  fund  at  present  approximately  $1500  a  month  for  its 
incidental  expenses,  materials  used,  wages  paid  the  destitute  women, 
and  allowances  to  feed  their  children,  and  more  families  are  constantly 
applying  for  assistance.  At  the  time  of  writing  this  there  is  not  enough 
money  remaining  to  cover  two  months'  expenditures,  and  winter  is 
with  us. 

^  Only  the  families  of  those  soldiers  now  at  the  front  who  have 
done  military  service  previous  to  this  war  are  entitled  to  relief  from 
the  Italian  government;  wives  receive  fourteen  cents  a  day  and 
children  seven  cents  each  a  day.    Of  the  names  of  reservists*  wives 


104  THE    STORY    OF    NEDDA 

ceive  assistance  from  the  Italian  government,  and 
that  relief,  when  given,  is  wholly  inadequate  to  keep 
them  alive  and  under  shelter  at  the  existing  cost  of 
living. 

What  are  you  going  to  do  about  it,  American 
readers?  Here  are  a  large  number  of  defenceless 
women  and  children  left  derelict  on  our  shores  by 
the  great  undertow  of  war,  which  has  torn  their 
natural  protectors  from  them.  Will  you  see  them 
starve.''  Will  you  "  sit  tight  "  and  see  the  sufferings 
of  poor  little  Nedda  and  her  baby  become  an  actual- 
ity in  our  midst  again  and  again.''  I  appeal  to  you 
in  the  name  of  our  common  humanity,  as  men  and 
women,  as  husbands  and  wives,  as  fathers  and 
mothers,  to  come  to  the  rescue  of  these  unfortunate 
families  before  it  is  too  late. 

The  necessary  detachable  subscription  forms, 
which  it  is  particularly  requested  will  be  filled  in 
and  forwarded  uith  remittances,  are  affixed  at  the 
front  of  this  book. 

recorded  on  the  books  of  the  New  England  Italian  War  Relief  Fund 
only  sixteen  have  received  or  are  receiving  such  governmental  aid 
and  thirty -nine  are  without  and  not  entitled  to  it  by  the  regulations. 


DATE  DUE                                   1 

J)V>  . 

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1 

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^ 

HIGHSMITH    45-102                                                  PRIN  TED   IN   U.S.  A. 

Do38    13R6 

Roberts,    Lewis    Niles. 

Tiie    story    of   Medda 


UC  SOUTHER'']  RfGio^AI   I.IRRARV  rARllJTY 


AA  001  328  933   5 


3  1210  00578  9183 


/.■.....,,...■,  :,,,,  . :  '.■.'yy-"yjfji,.'i')luri 


